/ 




"THE liOYS, POINTING AFTER HIM, WOULD CALL HIM 'THE CRAZY EXPLORER.'" 



See page 36 



THE TRUE STORY OF 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 



CALLED THE GREAT ADMIRAL 



TOLD FOR YOUNGEST READERS 




BY 

ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS 

Author of 

The Story of the United States," " Historic Boys," " Historic Girls, 

" Story of the American Indian," " Story of the American Sailor," 

" In No Man's Land," and others 



PRO FUSEL V ILL USTRA TED 



BOSTON *^« '^ 

D. LOTHROP COMPANY 

WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD 






Copyright, 1S92, 

BY 

D. LoTHROP Company. 



A 






PREFACE 



This " True Story of Christopher Columbus " is offered and 
inscribed to the boys and girls of America as the opening volume 
in a series especially designed for their reading, and to be called 
" Children's Lives of Great Men." In this series the place of honor, 
or rather of position, is given to Columbus the Admiral, because had 
it not been for him and for his pluck and faith and perseverance there 
might have been no young Americans, such as we know to-day, to 
read or care about the world's great men. 

Columbus led the American advance; he discovered the New 
World ; he left a record of persistence in spite of discouragement and 
of triumph over all obstacles, that has been the inspiration and guide 
for Americans ever since his day, and that has led them to work on 
in faith and hope until the end they strove for was won. 

" The True Story of Christopher Columbus " will be followed by 
the " true story " of others who have left names for us to honor and 
revere, who have made the world better because they lived, and who 
have helped to make and to develop American freedom, strength and 
progress. 

It will be the endeavor to have all these presented in the simple, 

straightforward, earnest way that appeals to children, and shows how 

the hero can be the man, and the man the hero. 

E. S. B. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA 



II 



CHAPTER II. 

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA ^3 

CHAPTER III. 

HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND 34 

CHAPTER IV. 

HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY 4^ 

CHAPTER V. 

HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS 5^ 

CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED "" 

CHAPTER VII. 

HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF ...... 02 

CHAPTER VIII. 

TRYING IT AGAIN . 9^ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN . 

CHAPTER X. 



FROM PARADISE TO PRISON 



103 



112 



CHAPTER XI. 

HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN . 

CHAPTER XII. 

HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE 

CHAPTER XIII. 



THE END OF THE STORY 



CHAPTER XIV. 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT 



124 



141 



157 



173 



#'" " ikiiM'iB r, 




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



■' " The Boys pointing after him would Call him ' the crazy Explorer.' " Frontis. 

Sailing to distant Lands 12 

-^ The Birthplace of Columbus . , • ^3 

Bound around Africa 18 

Genoa, the Birthplace of Columbus 16 

" Golden Cathay " 17 

First Inspirations of Columbus 19 

Columbus at Thirty 21 

What Folks Thought Lived in the "Jumping-off Place " 22 

The Round Earth . 24 

A Dream of Cathay 25 

A Wise Old Scholar 28 

The Room in the Convent of Rabida in which they Talked it Over 31 

The Treasures of Cathay 34 

The Convent of Rabida where Columbus Found Friends 35 

Looking toward Cathay 37 

The City Gate of Santa Fe ) ^ .q 

The Alhambra at Granada > 

Columbus at Granada Explaining his Ideas to Queen Isabella 41 

The World as Columbus Knew it when he Went to School 43 

The Bridge of Pinos where the Queen's Messenger found Columbus 46 

The Church of St. George at Palos 49 

The Siuita Maria, the Flag-ship of Columbus 5^ 

What Pedro the Cabin Boy Expected to become in Cathay 54 

The Departure from Palos • 55 

Good-by, Columbus !........• 57 

The T'vo Owners 59 

The Three Caravels 61 

A City in the Sea ' 63 

Watching for Land "4 

The Night before the Discovery 65 

Columbus Sees a Light °7 

The Landing of Columbus {From a German picture) ... 71 

The Place where Columbus Landed 74 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The l^and'mg of CoXumhus (From fke painfm^ in t/it; Ca/>!(o/) 75 

" They have Come from Heaven," they Said .......... 77 

The Tropic Islands ............... 78 

The New Land 79 

Captain Alonso Pinzon .............. 82 

Fort La Navidad 84 

Columbus Received by Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona 87 

Columbus has Come ............... 89 

Looking at the Procession .............. 90 

Columbus Telling his Adventures to Juan Perez at Rabida ....... 91 

The Harbor of Cadiz '93 

" He saw the Hill-tops of Dominica "............ 94 

The Lurking Indian ............... 95 

Caonabo and his Braves 97 

The Tower of the Fort .............. 98 

The Ruins of Isabella 99 

The Grumblers 

lOI 



f ■ 



Statue of Leif Ericsson in Boston 

Along the Shore of Cuba ...*......,... 104 

Columbus in the Garb of a Priest ..... ....... 108 

The Queen's Messengers ....... ....... 109 

Ferdinand and Isabella .............. 110 

In Sight of the mountain Peaks of Trinidad iii 

The Three Ships of Columbus Leaving " Paradise " 113 

In the Dragon's Mouth . . . ........... 115 

Bartholomew Columbus, Brother of the Admiral 117 

On the Dock at Cadiz iig 

Paddles and Pots from the Indies 120 

" He Listened to the Complaints of all the Black Sheep " 121 

Feathers and Fruit from the Indies 123 

Columbus in Chains 125 

TheMan who Wanted "to Set Matters Straight " 127 



The Alhambra 



130 



The Court of the Lions in the Alhambra 131 

I am still the Admiral 134 

The old Castle and water Batteries at Santo Domingo 135 

Getting ready the Gold Fleet 137 

Corner of the City Wall and Sentry Box, Santo Domingo 138 

The Wreck of Bobadilla's Ship 139 

" Broken and Shattered " ... 140 

A Fragment of the Alhambra 141 

Off the Coast of Honduras. 142 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



" The Galley of the Cacique " 143 

The People of Honduras see the Ships of the Admiral 146 

A Gold Hunt in Veragua 148 

On the Mosquito Coast 149 

Sir Christopher's Cove on the Island of Jamaica 150 

On the Island of Jamaica 151 

Diego Mendez going for Help 154 

Storm-tossed in the Indies 155 

Seville the Beautiful 156 

The Arms of Columbus 158 

The Death of Columbus 159 

The House in Valladolid in which Columbus Died 162 

A Cloister in the old Cathedral in Santo Domingo 163 

Americus Vespucius ............... 164 

Map showing the four Voyages of Columbus 165 

Ruins of the Palace of Diego in Santo Domingo 168 

Spanish Adventurers Exploring the New Land i6g 

A Medal of Columbus ... • . . 172 

Two Historic Bridges. ........ » 174 

Independence Hall, Philadelphia 175 

The White City by the Lake 177 

The Discoverer of our Country x 

The Founder of our Country > " '79 

The Savior of our Country 

The Harbor of New York City and the Statue of Liberty ..,.,... 180 

Looking down the Lagoon on the World's Fair Grounds ........ 182 

The Old and the New 183 

A Railway Station in Philadelphia 185 

A Business Street in Chicago ) 

° }• 186 

The Dome of the Capitol ) 



THE TRUE STORY OF 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 



CHAPTER I. 




BOY WITH AN IDEA. 

EN who do great things are men we all 
like to read about. This is the story 
of Christopher Columbus, the man 
who discovered America. He lived 
four hundred years ago. When he was a little boy he lived 
in Genoa. It was a beautiful city in the northwestern part 
of the country called Italy. The mountains were behind it ; 
the sea was in front of it, and it was so beautiful a place 
that the people who lived there called it " Genoa the Superb." 
Christopher Columbus was born in this beautiful city of 
Genoa in the year 1446, at number 27 Ponticello Street. He 
was a bright little fellow with a fresh-looking face, a clear 
eye and golden hair. His. father's name was Domenico 
Columbus ; his mother's name was Susanna. His father 
was a wool-comber. He cleaned and straightened out the 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 



j^^ 



snarled-up wool that was cut from the sheep so as to make it 
ready to be woven into cloth. 

Christopher helped his father do this when he grew strong 
enough, but he went to school, too, and learned to read and 
write and to draw maps and charts. These charts were maps 
of the sea, to show the sailors where they could steer without 
running on the rocks and sand, and how to sail safely from 
one country to another. 

This world was not as big then as it is now — or, I 
should say, people did not know it was as big. Most of the 
lands that Columbus had studied about in school, and 

most of the people he had 
heard about, were in Europe 
and parts of Asia and Africa. 

The city of Genoa where 
Columbus lived was a very 
busy and a very rich city. It 
was on the Mediterranean Sea, 
and many of the people who 
lived there were sailors who went in their ships on voyages 
to distant lands. They sailed to other places on the Mediter- 
ranean Sea, which is a very large body of water, you know, 
and to England, to France, to Norway, and even as far 
away as the cold northern island of Iceland. This was 
thought to be a great journey. 

The time in which Columbus lived was not as nice a 
time as is this in which you live. People were always 




SAILING TO DISTANT LANDS. 




THE BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS. 

{The house at the right, with the tablet over the door, is the one in which the great Admiral was 
born. The arch in the distance is the old Gate of St. Andrew.) 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 



IS 



quarreling and fighting about one thing or another, and the 
sailors who belonged to one country would try to catch and 
steal the ships or the things that belonged to the sailors or 
the storekeepers of another country. This is what we call 
piracy, and a pirate, you know% is thought to be a very 
wicked man. 

But when Columbus lived, men did not think it was so 
very wicked to be a sort of half-way pirate, although they 
did know that they would be killed if they were caught. 
So almost every sailor was about half pirate. Every boy 
who lived near the seashore and saw the ships and the 
sailors, felt as though he would like to sail away to far-off 
lands and see all the strange sights and do all the brave 
things that the sailors told about. Many of them even said 
they would like to be pirates and fight with other sailors, 
and show how strong and brave and plucky they could be. 

Columbus was one of these. He was what is called 
an adventurous boy. He did not like to stay quietly at 
home with his father and comb out the tangled wool. He 
thought it would be much nicer to sail away to sea and be a 
brave captain or a rich merchant. 

When he was about fourteen years old he really did go 
to sea. There was a captain of a sailing vessel that some- 
times came to Genoa who had the same last name — Colum- 
bus. He was no relation, but the little Christopher somehow 
got acquainted with him among the wharves of Genoa. 
Perhaps he had run on errands for him, or helped him with 



i6 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 



some of the sea-charts he knew so well how to draw. At 
any rate he sailed away with this Captain Columbus as his 
cabin boy, and went to the wars with him and had quite an 
exciting life for a boy. 

Sailors are very fond of telling big stories about their 
own adventures or about far-off lands and countries. Colum- 




GENOA, THE BIRTHPLACE OF COLUMBUS. 
{"It was so beautiful a place that ilte people who lived tltere called it ' Genoa the Superb. ' " ) 

bus listened to many of these sea-stories, and heard many 
wonderful things about a very rich land away to the East 
that folks called Cathay. 

If you look in your geographies you will not find any 
such place on the map as Cathay, but you will find China, 
and that was what men in the time of Columbus called 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 



17 



Cathay. They told very big stories about this far-off Eastern 
land. They said its kings lived in golden houses, that they 
were covered with pearls and diamonds, and that everybody 
there was so rich that money was as plentiful as the stones 
in the street. 

This, of course, made the sailors and storekeepers, who 
were part pirate, very anxious to go to Cathay and get 
some of the gold and jewels and spices and splendor for 
themselves. But Cathay was miles and miles away from 
Italy and Spain and France and England. It was away 
across the deserts and mountains 
and seas and rivers, and they had to 
give it up because they could not 
sail there. 

At last a man whose name was 
Marco Polo, and v/ho was a very 
brave and famous traveler, really did 

•^ " GOLDEN CATHAY." 

go there, in spite of all the trouble it 

took. And when he got back his stories were so very sur- 
prising that men were all the more anxious to find a way to 
sail in their ships to Cathay and see it for themselves. 

But of course they could not sail over the deserts and 
mountains, and they were very much troubled because they 
had to give up the idea, until the son of the king of Port- 
ugal, named Prince Henry, said he believed that ships could 
sail around Africa and so get to India or "the Indies" as 
they called that land, and finally to Cathay. 




i8 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 



Just look at your map again and see what a long, long 
voyage it would be to sail from Spain and around Africa 
to India, China and Japan. It is such a long sail that, 
as you know, the Suez Canal was dug some twenty years 
ago so that ships could sail through the Mediterranean Sea 
and out into the Indian Ocean, and not have to go away 
around Africa. 

But when Columbus was a boy it was even worse than 
now, for no one really knew how long Africa was, or whether 
ships really could sail around it. But Prince Henry said 
he knew they could, and he sent out ships to try. He 

died before his Portuguese sailors, 
Bartholomew Diaz, in 1493, and 
Vasco de Gama, in 1497, at last did 
sail around it and got as far as 
"the Indies." 

So while Prince Henry was try- 
ing to see whether ships could sail 
around Africa and reach Cathay in 
that way, the boy Columbus was 
listening to the stories the sailors 
told and was wondering whether some other and easier 
way to Cathay might not be found. 

When he was at school he had studied about a certain 
man named Pythagoras, who had lived in Greece thousands 
of years before he was born, and who had said that the earth 
was round "like a ball or an orange." As Columbus grew 




BOUND AROUND AFRICA. 




FIRST INSPIRATIONS OF COLUMBUS. 
{From the sfatiu by Giulio Monteverde, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ) 



A BOV WITH AN IDEA. 



older and made maps and studied the sea, and read books 
and listened to what other people sajd, he began to believe 
that this man named Pythagoras might be right, and that 
the earth was round, though everybody declared it was 
flat. " If it is round," he said to himself, " what is the use of 
trying to sail around Africa to get to Cathay? Why not 
just sail west from Italy or Spain and keep going right 
around the world until you strike 
Cathay? I believe it could be 
done," said Columbus. 

By this time Columbus was a 
man. He was thirty years old and 
was a great sailor. He had been 
captain of a number of vessels ; 
he had sailed north and south and 
east; he knew all about a ship and 
all about the sea. But, though he 
was so good a sailor, when he said 
that he believed the earth was 
round, everybody laughed at him and said that he was crazy. 
" Why, how can the earth be round ? " they cried. " The water 
would all spill out if it were, and the men who live on the 
other side would all be standing on their heads with their feet 
waving in the air." And then they laughed all the harder. 

But Columbus did not think it was anything to laugh 
at. He believed it so strongly, and felt so sure that he was 
right, that he set to work to find some king or prince or great 




COLUMBUS AT THIRTY. 



22 



A BOY WITH AN IDEA. 



lord to let him have ships and sailors and money enough to 
try to find a way to Cathay by sailing out into the West 
and across the Atlantic Ocean. 

Now this Atlantic Ocean, the western waves of which 
break upon our rocks and beaches, was thought in Colum- 
bus's day to be a dreadful place. People called it the Sea of 
Darkness, because they did not know what was on the other 
side of it, or what dangers lay beyond that distant blue rim 
where the sky and water seem to meet, and which we call 
the horizon. They thought the ocean stretched to the end 
of a flat world, straight away to a sort of "jumping-off 
place," and that in 
this horrible Jump- 
ing-off place were 
giants and goblins 
and dragons and 
monsters and all sorts of terrible 
things that would catch the 
ships and destroy .them and the sailors. 

So when Columbus said that he 
wanted to sail away toward this dreadful 
jumping-off place, the people said that he was worse than crazy. 
They said he was a wicked man and ought to be punished. 

But they could not frighten Columbus. He kept on 
trying. He went from place to place trying to get the ships 
and sailors he wanted and was bound to have. As you will 
see in the next chapter, he tried to get help wherever he 




WHAT FOLKS THOUGHT 
LIVED IN THE " JUMPING- 
OFF PLACE." 



WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OE THE IDEA. 23 

thought it could be had. He asked the people of his own 
home, the city of Genoa, where he had lived and played 
when a boy ; he asked the people of the beautiful city that 
is built in the sea — Venice; he tried the king of Portugal, 
the king of England, the king of France, the king and queen 
of Spain. But for a long time nobody cared to listen to 
such a wild and foolish and dangerous plan — to go to Cathay 
by the way of the Sea of Darkness and the Jumping-off 
place. You would never get there alive, they said. 

And so Columbus waited. And his hair grew white 
while he waited, though he was not yet an old man. He 
had thought and worked and hoped so much that he began 
to look like an old man when "he was forty years old. But 
still he would never say that perhaps he was wrong, after all. 
He said he knew he was right, and that some day he should 
find the Indies and sail to Cathay. 



CHAPTER n. 

WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 

T DO not wish you to think that Columbus was the first 
^ man to say that the earth was round, or the first to sail 
to the West over the Atlantic Ocean. He was not. Other 
men had said that they believed the earth was round ; other 




24 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 

men had sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. But no sailor 
who believed the earth was round had ever yet tried to prove 
that it was by crossing the Atlantic. So, you see, Columbus 
was really the first man to say, 1 believe the earth is round 
and I will show you that it is by sailing to the lands that 
are on the other side of the earth. 

He even figured out how far it was around the world. 
Your geography, you know, tells you now 
that what is called the circumference of the 
earth — that is, a straight line drawn right 
around it — is nearly twenty-five thousand 
miles. Columbus had figured it up pretty 
carefully and he thought it was about twenty 

1 JIE KOUI\D EARTH. JO J 

thousand miles. If I could start from 
Genoa, he said, and walk straight ahead until I got back 
to Genoa again, I should walk about twenty thousand miles. 
Cathay, he thought, would take up so much land on the 
other side of the world that, if he went west instead of east, 
he would only need to sail about twenty-five hundred or 
three thousand miles. 

If you have studied your geography carefully you will 
see what a mistake he made. 

It is really about twelve thousand miles from Spain to 
China (or Cathay as he called it). But America is just about 
three thousand miles from Spain, and if you read all this 
story you will see how Columbus's mistake really helped him 
to discover America. ** 




A UKKAM UK CATHAY. 

(Every boy of spirit in those days of adventtcre felt certain that he could find and conqtur that 

land of fable.) 



WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 27 

I have told you that Columbus had a longing to do some- 
thing great from the time when, as a little boy, he had hung 
around the wharves in Genoaand looked at the ships sailing 
east and west and talked with the sailors and wished that he 
could go to sea. Perhaps what he had learned at school — 
how some men said that the earth was round — and what he 
had heard on the wharves about the wonders of Cathay set 
him to thinking and to dreaming that it might be possible 
for a ship to sail around the world without falling off. At 
any rate, he kept on thinking and dreaming and longing until, 
at last, he began doing. 

Some of the sailors sent out by Prince Henry of Portu- 
gal, of whom I have told you, in their trying to sail around 
Africa discovered twogroups of islands out in the Atlantic that 
they called the Azores, or Isles of Hawks, and the Canaries, 
or Isles of Dogs. When Columbus was in Portugal in 
1470 he became acquainted with a young woman whose 
name was Philippa Perestrelo. In 1473 he married her. 

Now Philippa's father, before his death, had been governor 
of Porto Santo, one of the Azores, and Columbus and his 
wife went off there to live. In the governor's house Colum- 
bus found a lot of charts and maps that told him about 
parts of the ocean that he had never before seen, and made 
him feel certain that he was right in saying that if he sailed 
away to the West he should find Cathay. 

At that time there was an old man who lived in Flor- 
ence, a city of Italy. His name was Toscanelli. He was a 







28 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OE THE IDEA. 

great scholar and studied the stars and made maps, and was 
a very wise man. Columbus knew what a wise old scholar 
Toscanelli was, for Florence is not very far from Genoa. So 
while he was living in the Azores he wrote to this old 
scholar asking him what he thought about his idea that a 
man could sail around the world until he reached the land 
called the Indies and at last found Cathay. 

Toscanelli wrote to Columbus saying that he 
believed his idea was the right one, and he 
said it would be a grand thing to do, if Co- 
lumbus dared to try it. Perhaps, he said, 
you can find all those splendid things that I 
A WISE OLD know are in Cathay — the great cities with 

marble bridges, the houses of marble covered 
with gold, the jewels and the spices and the precious stones, 
and all the other wonderful and magnificent things. I do 
not wonder you wish to try, he said, for if you find Cathay 
it will be a wonderful thing for you and for Portugal. 

That settled it with Columbus. If this wise old scholar 
said he was right, he must be right. So he left his home 
in the Azores and went to Portugal. This was in 1475, and 
from that time on, for seventeen long years he was trying to 
get some king or prince to help him sail to the West to 
find Cathay. 

But not one of the people who could have helped him, if 
they had really wished to, believed in Columbus. As I told 
you, they said that he was crazy. The king of Portugal, 



WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. ag 

whose name was John, did a very unkind thing — I am sure 
you would call it a mean trick. Columbus had gone to him 
with his story and asked for ships and sailors. The king 
and his chief men refused to help him ; but King John said 
to himself, perhaps there is something in this worth looking 
after and, if so, perhaps I can have my own people find 
Cathay and save the money that Columbus will want to keep 
for himself as his share of what he finds. So one day he 
copied off the sailing directions that Columbus had left with 
him, and gave them to one of his own captains without letting 
Columbus know anything about it. The Portuguese cap- 
tain sailed away to the West in the direction Columbus had 
marked down, but a great storm came up and so frightened 
the sailors that they turned around in a hurry. Then they 
hunted up Columbus and began to abuse him for getting 
them into such a scrape. You might as well expect to find 
land in the sky, they said, as in those terrible waters. 

And when, in this way, Columbus found out that King 
John had tried to use his ideas without letting him know 
anything about it, he was very angry. His wife had died in 
the midst of this mean trick of the Portuguese king, and so, 
taking with him his little five-year-old son, Diego, he left 
Portugal secretly and went over into Spain. 

Near the little town of Palos, in western Spain, is a green 
hill looking out toward the Atlantic. Upon this hill stands 
an old building that, four hundred years ago, was used as a 
a convent or home for priests. It was called the Convent of 



30 WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. 

Rabida, and the priest at the head of it was named the Friar 
Juan Perez. One autumn day, in the year 1484, Friar Juan 
Pqrez saw a dusty traveler with a little boy talking with the 
gate-keeper of the convent. The stranger was so tall and 
fine-looking, and seemed such an interesting man, that Friar 
Juan went out and began to talk with him. This man was 
Columbus. 

As they talked, the priest grew more and more interested 
in what Columbus said. He invited him into the convent to 
stay for a few days, and he asked some other people — the 
doctor of Palos and some of the sea captains and sailors of 
the town — to come and talk with this stranger who had 
such a singular idea about sailing across the Atlantic. 

It ended in Columbus's staying some months in Palos, 
waiting for a chance to go and see the king and queen. 
At last, in 1485, he set out for the Spanish court with a letter 
to a priest who was a friend of Friar Juan's, and who could 
help him to see the king and queen. 

At that time the king and queen of Spain were fighting 
to drive out of Spain the people called the Moors. These 
people came from Africa, but they had lived in Spain for 
many years and had once been a very rich and powerful 
nation. They were not Spaniards ; they were not Christians. 
So all Spaniards and all Christians hated them and tried to 
drive them out of Europe. 

The king and queen of Spain who were fighting the 
Moors were named Ferdinand and Isabella. They were 



WHAT PEOPLE THOUGHT OF THE IDEA. ^^ 

pretty good people as kings and queens went in those days, 
but they did a great many very cruel and very mean things, 
just as the kings and queens of those days were apt to do. 
I am afraid we should not think they were very nice people 
nowadays. We certainly should not wish our American boys 
and girls to look up to them as good and true and noble. 

When Columbus first came to them, they were with the 
army in the camp near the city of Cordova. The king and 
queen had no time to listen to what they thought were crazy 
plans, and poor Columbus could get no one to talk with him 
who could be of any help. So he was obliged to go back to 
drawing maps and selling books to make enough money to 
support himself and his little Diego. 

But at last, through the friend of good Friar Juan Perez 
of Rabida, who was a priest at the court, and named Talavera, 
and to whom he had a letter of introduction, Columbus found 
a chance to talk over his plans with a number of priests and 
scholars in the city of Salamanca where there was a famous 
college and many learned men. 

Columbus told his story. He said what he wished to do, 
and asked these learned men to say a good word for him to 
Ferdinand and Isabella so that he could have the ships and 
sailors to sail to Cathay. But it was of no use. 

What! sail away around the world ? those wise men cried 
in horror. Why, you are crazy. The world is not round; it 
is flat. Your ships would tumble off the edge of the world 
and all the king's money and all the king's men would be 



34 ffOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 



lost. No, no ; go away ; you must not trouble the queen or 
even mention such a ridiculous thing again. 

So the most of them said. But one 
or two thought it might be worth try- 
Cathay was a very rich country, 



m mg. Catnay was a very ricn country, 
Jl| and if this foolish fellow were willing to 
).L run the risk and did succeed, it would 



be a good thing for Spain, as the king 

and queen would need a great deal of 

money after the war with the Moors 

was over. At any rate, it was a chance worth 

thinking about. 

And so, although Columbus was dread- 
fully disappointed, he thought that if he had 
only a few friends at Court who were ready 
to say a good word for him he must not 
give up, but must try, try again. And so he staid in Spain. 




THE TRKASURES OF 
CATHAY. 



CHAPTER III. 



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 



WHEN you wish very much to do a certain thing it is 
dreadfully hard to be patient ; it is harder still to 
have to wait. Columbus had to do both 



The wars agamst 



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 35 

the Moors were of much greater interest to the king and 
queen of Spain than was the finding of a new and very un- 
certain way to get to Cathay. If it had not been for the 
patience and what we call the persistence of Columbus, 
America would never have been discovered — at least not 
in his time. 

He staid in Spain. He grew poorer and poorer. He 




THE CONVENT OF RABIDA WHERE COLUMBUS i-OUND FKIENUS. 



Was almost friendless. It seemed as if his great enterprise 
must be given up. But he never lost hope. He never 
stopped trying. Even when he failed he kept on hoping 
and kept on trying. He felt certain that sometime he should 
succeed. 

As we have seen,he tried to interest the rulers of different 
countries, but with no success. He tried to get help from 



36 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 

his old home-town of Genoa and failed ; he tried Portugal 
and failed ; he tried the Republic of Venice and failed ; he 
tried the king and queen of Spain and failed ; he tried some 
of the richest and most powerful of the nobles of Spain and 
failed ; he tried the king of England (whom he got his 
brother, Bartholomew Columbus, to go and see) and failed. 
There was still left the king of France. He would make 
one last attempt to win the king and queen of Spain to his 
side and if he failed with them he would try the last of the 
rulers of Western Europe, the king of France. 

He followed the king and queen of Spain as they went 
from place to place fighting the Moors. He hoped that 
some day, when they wished to think of something besides 
fighting, they might think of him and the gold and jewels 
and spices of Cathay. 

The days grew into months, the months to years, and 
still the war against the Moors kept on ; and still Columbus 
waited for the chance that did not come. People grew to 
know him as "the crazy explorer" as they met him in 
the streets or on the church steps of Seville or Cordova, and 
even ragged little boys of the town, sharp-eyed and shrill- 
voiced as all such ragged little urchins are, would run after 
this big man with the streaming white hair and the tattered 
cloak, calling him names or tapping their brown little fore- 
heads with their dirty fingers to show that even they knew 
that he was " as crazy as a loon." 

At last he decided to make one more attempt before giving 




liiiiiiill iiii 



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 39 

it Up in Spain. His money was gone; his friends were few; 
but he remembered his acquaintances at Palos and so he 
journeyed back to see once more his good friend Friar Juan 
Perez at the Convent of Rabida on the hill that looked out 
upon the Atlantic he was so anxious to cross. 

It was in the month of November, 1491, that he went 
back to the Convent of Rabida. If he could not get any 
encouragement there, he was determined to stay in Spain no 
longer but to go away and try the king of France. 

Once more he talked over the finding of Cathay with the 
priests and the sailors of Palos. They saw how patient he 
was ; how persistent he was ; how he would never give up 
his ideas until he had tried them. They were moved by his 
determination. They began to believe in him more and 
more. They resolved to help him. One of the principal sea 
captains of Palos was named Martin Alonso Pinzon. He 
became so interested that he offered to lend Columbus 
money enough to make one last appeal to the king and 
queen of Spain, and if Columbus should succeed with them, 
this Captain Pinzon said that he would go into partnership 
with Columbus and help him out when it came to getting 
ready to sail to Cathay. 

This was a move in the right direction. At once a mes- 
senger was sent to the splendid Spanish camp before the 
city of Granada, the last unconquered city of the Moors of 
Spain. The king and queen of Spain had been so long try- 
ing to capture Granada that this camp was really a city, 



40 BOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 




THE CITY GATE OF SANTA FE. 



with gates and walls and houses. It was called Santa Fe. 
Queen Isabella, who was in Santa Fe, after some delay, 
agreed to hear more about the crazy scheme of this persistent 

Genoese sailor, and the Friar 
Juan Perez was sent for. 
He talked so well in be- 
half of his friend Columbus 
that the queen became still 
more interested. She ordered 
Columbus to come and see 
her, and sent him sixty-five 
dollars to pay for a mule, a 
new suit of clothes and the journey to court. 

About Christmas time, in the year 1491, Columbus, 
mounted upon his mule, rode into the Spanish camp before 
the city of Granada. But even now, when he had been told 
to come, he had to wait. Granada was almost captured; the 
Moors were almost conquered. At last the end came. On 
the second of January, 1492, 
the Moorish king gave up the 
keys of his beloved city, and 
the great Spanish banner was 
hoisted on the highest tower 
of the Alhambra — the hand- 
somest building in Granada 
and one of the most beautiful in the world. The Moors 
were driven out of Spain and Columbus's chance had come. 




THE ALHAMBRA AT GRANADA. 



HO IV COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 41 



So he appeared before Queen Isabella and her chief men 
and told them again of all his plans and desires. The 
queen and her advisers sat in a great room in that splendid 
Alhambra I have told you of. King Ferdinand was not 
there. He did not believe in Columbus and did not wish to 
let him have either money, ships or sailors to lose in such a 




CDLITMBUS AT GRANADA EXPLAINING HIS IDEAS TlJ QUEEN ISABELLA. 

foolish way. But as Columbus stood before her and talked 
so earnestly about how he expected to find the Indies and 
Cathay and what he hoped to bring away from there, Queen 
Isabella listened and thought the plan worth trying. 

Then a singular thing happened. You would think if 
you wished for something very much that you would be 



42 HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 

willing to give up a good deal for the sake of getting it. 
Columbus had worked and waited for seventeen years. He 
had never got what he wanted. He was always being disap- 
pointed. And yet, as he talked to the queen and told her 
what he wished to do, he said he must have so much as a 
reward for doing it that the queen and her chief men were 
simply amazed at his — well, what the boys to-day call 
" cheek" — that they would have nothing to do with him. 
This man really is crazy, they said. This poor Genoese 
sailor comes here without a thing except his very odd ideas 
and almost " wants the earth " as a reward. This is. not 
exactly what they said, but it is what they meant. 

His few friends begged him to be more modest. Do not 
ask so much, they said, or you will get nothing. But Colum- 
bus was determined. I have worked and waited all these 
years, he replied. I know just what I can do and just how 
much I can do for the king and queen of Spain. They must 
pay me what I ask and promise what I say, or I will go some- 
where else. Go,then ! said the queen and her advisers. And 
Columbus tiirned his back on what seemed almost his last 
hope, mounted his mule and rode away. 

Then something else happened. As Columbus rode off 
to find the French king, sick and tired of all his long and 
useless labor at the Spanish court, his few firm friends there 
saw that, unless they did something right away, all the glory 
and all the gain of this enterprise Columbus had taught them 
to believe in would be lost to Spain. So two of them, whose 



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN EOK HIS FRIEND. 45 

names were Santangel and (juintanilla, rushed into the 
queen's room and begged her, if she wished to become the 
greatest queen in Christendom, to call back this wandering 
sailor, agree to his terms and profit by his labors. 

What if he does ask a great deal ? they said. He has 
spent his life thinking his plan out ; no wonder he feels 
that he ought to have a good share of what he finds. What 
he asks is really small compared with what Spain will gain. 
The war with the Moors has cost you ever so much ; your 
money-chests are empty ; Columbus will fill them up. The 
people of Cathay are heathen ; Columbus will help you 
make them Christian men. The Indies and Cathay are 
full of gold and jewels;. Columbus will bring you home 
shiploads of treasures. Spain has conquered the Moors ; 
Columbus will help you conquer Cathay. 

In fact, they talked to Queen Isabella so strongly and so 
earnestly, that she, too, became excited over this chance for 
glory and riches that she had almost lost. Quick ! send for 
Columbus. Call him back ! she said. I agree to his terms. 
If King Ferdinand cannot or will not take the risk, I, the 
queen, will do it all. Quick ! do not let the man get into 
France. After him. Bring him back ! 

And without delay a royal messenger, mounted on a swift 
horse, was sent at full gallop to bring Columbus back. 

All this time poor Columbus felt bad enough. Every- 
thing had gone wrong. Now he must go aw^ay into a new 
land and do it all over again. Kings and queens, he felt, 



46 NOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 

were not to be depended upon, and he remembered a place 
in the Bible where it said : ** Put not your trust in princes." 
Sad, solitary and heavy-hearted, he jogged slowly along 
toward the mountains, wondering what the king of France 
would say to him, and w'hether it was really worth trying. 

Just as he was riding across the little bridge called the 
Bridge of Pinos, some six miles from Granada, he heard the 
quick hoof-beats of a horse behind him. It was a great spot 




THE BRIDGE OK PINOS WHERE THE QUEEN".S MESSENGER FOUND COLUMIUJS. 



for robbers, and Columbus felt of the little money he had in 
his traveling pouch, and wondered whether he must lose it 
all. The hoof-beats came nearer. Then a voice hailed him. 
Turn back, turn back! the messenger cried out. The queen 
bids you return to Granada. She grants you all you ask. 
Columbus hesitated. Ought he to trust this promise, he 



HOW COLUMBUS GAINED A QUEEN FOR HIS FRIEND. 47 

wondered. Put not your trust in princes, the verse in the 
Bible had said. If I go back I may only be put off and 
worried as I have been before. And yet, perhaps she means 
what she says. At any rate, I will go back and try once 
more. 

So, on the little Bridge of Pinos, he turned his mule 
around and rode back to Granada. And, sure enough, when 
he saw Oueen Isabella she ag^reed to all that he asked. If he 
found Cathay, Columbus was to be made admiral for life of 
all the new seas and oceans into which he might sail ; he 
was to be chief ruler of all the lands he might find ; he was 
to keep one tenth part of all the gold and jewels and treasures 
he should bring away, and was to have his " say " in all 
questions about the new lands. For his part (and this was 
because of the offer of his friend at Palos, Captain Pinzon) 
he agreed to pay one eighth of all the expenses of this expe- 
dition and of all new enterprises, and was to have one eighth 
of all the profits from them. 

So Columbus had his wish at last. The queen's men 
figured up how much money they could let him have ; they 
called him " Don Christopher Columbus," " Your Excellency" 
and " Admiral," and at once he set about getting ready for 
his voyage. 



48 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 

" I "HE agreement made between Columbus and the king 
-^ and queen of Spain was signed on the seventeenth of 
April, 1492. But it was four months before he was quite 
ready to sail away. 

He selected the town of Palos as the place to sail from, 
because there, as you know, Captain Pinzon lived ; there, 
too, he had other acquaintances, so that he supposed it would 
be easy to get the sailors he needed for his ships. But in 
this he was greatly mistaken. 

As soon as the papers had been signed that held the 
queen to her promise, Columbus set off for Palos. He 
stopped at the Convent of Rabida to tell the Friar Juan Perez 
how thankful he was to him for the help the good priest 
had given him, and how everything now looked promising 
and successful. 

The town of Palos, as you can see from your map of 
Spain, is situated at the mouth of the river Tinto on a little 
bay in the southwestern part of Spain, not far from the 
borders of Portugal. To-day the sea has gone away from it 
so much that it is nearly high and dry; but four hundred 



HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 49 

years ago it was quite a seaport, when Spain did not have 
a great many sea tow ns on the Atlantic coast. 

At the time of Columbus's voyage the king and queen of 
Spain were angry with the port of Palos for something its 
people had done that was wrong — just what this was we do 
not know. But to punish the town, and because Columbus 
wished to sail from there, the king and queen ordered that 
Palos should pay them a fine for their wrong-doing. And 
this fine was to lend the king and queen of Spain, for one 
year, without pay, two sailing vessels of the kind called cara- 
vels, armed and equipped " for the service of the crown " — 
that is, for the use of the king and queen of Spain, in the 
western voyage that Columbus was to make. 

When Columbus called together the leading people of 
Palos to meet him in the church 
of St. George and hear the royal 
commands, they came ; but at first 
they did not understand just 
what they must do. But when 
they knew that they must send 
two of their ships and some of 
their sailing men on this dreadful 

voyage far out upon the terrible Sea of Darkness, they were 
terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to go. They would 
obey the commands of the king and queen and furnish the 
two ships, but as for sailing off with this crazy sea captain 
— that they would not do. 




THE CHURCH OK ST. CEOKGK Al' TALOS. 



s^ 



HOW THE AD AURAL SAILED AWAY. 



Then the king's officers went to work. They seized some 
sailors (impressed is the word for this), and made them go; 
they took some from the jails, and gave them their freedom 
as a reward for going ; they begged and threatened and paid 
in advance, and still it was hard to get enough men for the 
two ships. Then Captain Pinzon, who had promised Colum- 
bus that he would join him, tried his hand. He added a 
third ship to the Admiral's " fleet." He made big promises 
to the sailors, and worked for weeks, until at last he was able 
to do what even the royal commands could not do, and a 
crew of ninety men was got together to man the three vessels. 

The names of these three vessels were the Capitana 
(changed before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and 
the Nina or Baby. Captain de la Cosa commanded the Santa 
Maria, Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon the Pinta and his 
brother. Captain V^incent Pinzon, the Nina. The Safita 
Maria was the largest of the three vessels ; it was therefore 
selected as the leader of the fleet — the flag-ship, as it is 
called — and upon it sailed the commander of the expedition, 
the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus. 

When we think of a voyage across the Atlantic nowa- 
days, we think of vessels as large as the big three-masted 
ships or the great ocean steamers — vessels over six hundred 
feet long and fifty feet wide. But these '• ships " of Colum- 
bus were not really ships. They were hardly larger than 
the " fishing smacks " that sail up and down our coast to-day. 
Some of them were not so laroe. The Santa Maria was, as 




THE SANTA MARIA, THE FLAG-SHIP OK COLUMBLS. 



( The ship in the picture is an exart copy in every way of the original Santa Maria, and loas Halt 
in Spain in 1S92 to come to America to take part in the Coliim'uan anniversaries.) 



HOW THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 53 

I have told you, the largest of the three, and she was only 
sixty-three feet long, twenty feet wide and ten and a half 
feet deep. Just measure this out on the ground and see 
how small, after all, the Admiral's •* flag-ship " really was. 
The Pinta was even smaller than this, while the little Nina 
was hardly anything more than a good-sized sail boat. Do 
you wonder that the poor people of Palos and the towns 
round about were frightened when they thought of their 
fathers and brothers and sons putting out to sea, on the 
great ocean they had learned to dread so much, in such shaky 
little boats as these? 

But finally the vessels were ready. The crews were se- 
lected. The time had come to go. Most of the sailors were 
Spanish men from the towns near to the sea, but somehow 
a few who were not Spaniards joined the crew. 

One of the first men to land in America from one of the 
ships of Columbus was an Irishman named William, from 
the County Galway. And another was an Englishman 
named either Arthur Laws or Arthur Larkins. The Spanish 
names for both these men look very queer, and only a wise 
scholar who digs among names and words could have found 
out what they really were. But such a one did find it out, 
and it increases our interest in the discovery of America to 
know that some of our own northern blood — the Irishman 
and the Englishman — were in the crews of Columbus. 

The Admiral Columbus was so sure he was going to 
find a rich and civilized country, such as India and Cathay 



54 



BO IV THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 



were said to be, that he took along on his ships the men he 
would need in such places as he expected to visit and among 
such splendid people as he was sure he should meet. He 
took along a lawyer to make out all the forms and proclama- 
tions and papers that would have to be sent by the Admiral 
to the kings and princes he expected to visit : he had a secre- 
taiy and historian to write out the story of what he should 
find and what he should do. There was a learned Jew, 
named Louis, who could speak almost a dozen languages, 
and who could, of course, tell him what 
the people of Cathay and Cipango and the 
Indies were talking about. There was a 
jeweler and silversmith who knew all 
about the gold and silver and precious 
stones that Columbus was going to load 
the ships with ; there was a doctor and a 
surgeon ; there were cooks and pilots, and 
even a little fellow, who sailed in the 
Santa Maria as the Admiral's cabin boy, 
and whose name was Pedro de Acevedo. 

Some scholars have said that it cost 
about two hundred and thirty thousand 
dollars to fit out this expedition. I do 
not think it cost nearly so much. We do know that Queer. 
Isabella gave sixty-seven thousand dollars to help pay 
for it. Some people, however, reckoning the old Spanish 
money in a different way, say that what Queen Isabella gave 




WHAT PEDRO THE CABIN 

BOY KXPPXPED TO BECOME 

IN CATHAY. 



HOW 'J BE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY 



^S 



toward the expedition was not over three or four thousand 
dollars of our money. Perhaps as much more was bor- 
rowed from King- Ferdinand, although he was to have no 
share in the enterprise in which Queen Isabella and Colum- 
bus were partners. 

It was just an hour before sunrise on Friday, the third 




THE DEPARTURE FROM I'AI.Ob. 

{The Friar Juan Perez bidding Colurnlms good-by. The building on the hi/ 1 is the Convent of Rabida.) 

of August, 1492, that the three little ships hoisted their 
anchors and sailed away from the port of Palos. I suppose 
it was a very sorry and a very exciting morning in Palos. 
The people probably crowded down on the docks, some of 



56 HOW THE ADMIRAL SAJLED AWAY. 

them sad and sorrowful, some of them restless and curious. 
Their fathers and brothers and sons and acquaintances were 
going ^ — no one knew where, dragged off to sea by a crazy 
old Italian sailor who thought there was land to be found 
somewhere beyond the Jumping-off place. They all knew 
he was wrong. They were certain that nothing but dreadful 
goblins and horrible monsters lived off there to the West, 
just waiting to devour or destroy the poor sailors when 
these three little ships should tumble over the edge. 

But how different Columbus must have felt as he stepped 
into the rovvboat that took him off to his " Hag-ship," the 
Santa Maria. His dreams had come true. He had ships 
and sailors under his command, and was about to sail away 
to discover great and wonderful things. He who had been 
so poor that he could hardly buy his own dinner, was now 
called Don and Admiral. He had a queen for his friend 
and helper. He was given a power that only the richest and 
noblest could hope for. But more than all, he was to have 
the chance he had wished and worked for so long. He was 
to find the Indies; he was to see Cathay; he was to have 
his share in all the wealth he should discover and bring 
away. The son of the poor wool-weaver of Genoa was to 
be the friend of kings and princes ; the cabin boy of a pirate 
was now Admiral of the Seas and Governor of the Colonies 
of Spain ! Do you wonder that he felt proud ? 

So, as I have told you, just before sunrise on a Friday 
morning in August, he boarded the Santa Maria and gave 



HO IF THE ADMIRAL SAILED AWAY. 



57 



orders to his captains " to get under way." The sailors with 
a " yo heave ho!" (or whatever the Spanish for that is) 
tuofored at the anchors, the sails filled with the morning 
breeze, and while the 
people of Pales watched 
them from the shore, 
while the good friar, 
Juan Perez, raised his 
hands to Heaven calling 
down a blessing on the 
enterprise, while the chil- 
dren waved a last good- 
by from the water-stairs, 
the three vessels steered 
out from Palos Harbor, 
and before that day's sun 
had set, Columbus and 
his fleet were full fifty 
miles on their way across 
the Sea of Darkness. The westward voyage to those won- 
derful lands, the Indies and Cathay, had at last begun. 





GOOn-F.Y, COI.UMISUS! 




58 BOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 

T^ID you ever set out, in the dark, to walk with your little 
^^ brother or sister along a road you did not know much 
about or had never gone over before? It was not an easy 
thing to do, was it? And how did your little brother or 
sister feel when it was known that you were not just certain 
whether you were right or not ? Do you remember what the 
Bible says about the blind leading the blind ? 

It was much the same with Columbus when he set out 
from Palos to sail over an unknown sea to find the uncertain 
land of Cathay. He had his own idea of the way there, but 
no one in all his company had ever sailed it, and he himself 
was not sure about it. He was very much in the dark. 
And the sailors in the three ships were worse than little 
children. They did not even have the confidence in their 
leader that your little brother or sister would probably have 
in you as you traveled that new road on a dark night. It 
was almost another case of the blind leading the blind, 
was it not ? 

Columbus first steered his ships to the south so as to 
reach the Canary Islands and commence his real westward 



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 



59 



voyage from there. The Canary Islands, as you will see by 
looking in your geography, are made up of seven islands and 
lie off the northern corner of Africa, some sixty miles or 
so west of Morocco: They were named Canaria by the Ro- 
mans from the Latin canis, a dog, " because of the multitude 
of dogs of great size " that were found there. The canary 
birds that sing so swxetly in your home come from these 
islands. They had been knowni to the Spaniards and other 
European sailors of Columbus's day about a hundred years. 

At the Canaries the troubles of Columbus commenced. 
And he did have a lot of trouble before his voyage was 
over. While near the island called the Grand Canary the 
rudder of the Pinfa, in which Captain Alonso Pinzon sailed, 
somehow got loose, then broke and finally came off. It was 
said that two of the Pintds crew, who were really the 
owners of the vessel, broke the rudder on purpose, because 
they had become frightened at the thoughts 
of the perilous voyage, and hoped by dam- 
aging their vessel to be left behind. 

But Columbus had no thought of doing 
any such thing. He sailed to the island 
of Gomera, where he knew some people, 
and had the Pmta mended. And while lying here with his 
fleet the great mountain on the island of Teneriffe, twelve 
thousand feet high, suddenly began to spit out flame and 
smoke. It was, as of course you know, a volcano; but the 
poor frightened sailors did not know what set this mountain 




THE TWO OWNERS. 



6o HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 

on fire, and they were scared almost out of their wits' and 
begged the Admiral to go back home. But Columbus would 
not. And as they sailed away from Gomera some sailors 
told them that the king of Portugal was angry with Colum- 
bus because he had got his ships from the king and queen 
of Spain, and that he had sent out some of his war-ships to 
worry or capture Columbus. 

But these, too, Columbus escaped, although not before 
his crews had grown terribly nervous for fear of capture. 
At last they got away from the Canaries, and on Sunday, the 
ninth of September, 1492, with a fresh breeze filling their 
sails, the three caravels sailed away into the West. And as 
the shores of Ferro, the very last of the Canary Islands, 
faded out of sight, the sailors burst into sighs and murmur- 
ings and tears, saying that now indeed they were sailing off 

off — off — upon the awful Sea of Darkness and would 

never see land any more. 

When Columbus thought that he was sailing too slowly 
— he had now been away from Palos a month and was only 
about a hundred miles out at sea — and when he saw what 
babies his sailors were, he did something that was not just 
right (for it is never right to do anything that is not true) 
but which he felt he really must do. He made two records 
(or reckonings as they are called) of his sailing. One of 
these records was a true one; this he kept for himself. The 
other was a false one ; this he kept to show his sailors. So 
while thev thought thev were sailing slowly and that the 



HO W THE Y FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 



6i 



ocean was not so very wide, Columbus knew from his own 
true record that they were getting miles and miles away 
from home. 

Soon another thing happened to worry the sailors. The 
pilots were steering by the compass. You know what that is 
— a sort of big magnet-needle perfectly balanced and pointing 
always to the north. At the time of 
Columbus the compass was a new 
thing and was only understood by a 
few. On the thirteenth of September 
they had really got into the middle 
of the ocean, and the line of the north 
chang'ecl. Of course this made the 
needle in the compass change its posi- 
tion also. Now the sailors had been 
taught to believe so fully in the 
compass that they thought it could 
never change its position. And here 
it was playing a cruel trick upon them, 
cried. The goblins in this dreadful sea are making our com- 
pass point wrong so as to drag us to destruction. Go back ; 
take us back ! they demanded. 

But Columbus, though he knew that his explanation was 
wrong, said the compass was all right. The North Star, 
toward which the needle always pointed, had, so he said, 
changed its position. This quieted the sailors for a while. 

When they had been about forty days out from Palos, 




THE THREE CARAVELS. 



We are trapped ! they 



62 HOW THEY FAILED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 

the ship ran into what is marked upon your maps as the 
Sargasso Sea. This is a vast meadow of floating seaweed 
and seagrass in the middle of the Atlantic ; it is kept drift- 
ing about in the same place by the two great sea currents 
that flow past it but not through it. 

The sailors did not know this, of course, and when the 
ships began to sail slower and slower because the seaweed 
was so thick and heavy and because there was no current to 
carry them along, they were sure tliat they were somewhere 
near to the Jumping-off place, and that the horrible monsters 
they had heard of were making ready to stop their ships, and 
when they had got them all snarled up in this weed to drag 
them all down to the bottom of the sea. 

For nearly a week the ships sailed over these vast sea- 
meadows, and when they were out of them they struck what 
we call the trade-winds — a never-failing breeze that blew them 
ever westward. Then the sailors cried out that they were in 
an enchanted land where there was but one wind and never a 
breeze to blow the poor sailors home again. Were they not 
fearfully "scarey?" But no doubt we should have been so, 
too, if we had been with them and knew no more than they did. 

And when they had been over fifty days from home 
on the twenty-fifth of September, some one suddenly cried 
Land ! Land ! And all hands crowded to the side. Sure 
enough, they all saw it, straight ahead of them — fair green 
islands and lofty hills and a city with castles and temples 
and palaces that glittered beautifully in the sun. 



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 



63 



Then they all cried for joy and sang hymns of praise and 
shouted to each other that their troubles were over. Cathay, 
it is Cathay! they cried; and they steered straight for the 
shining city. But, worst of all their troubles, even as they 
sailed toward the land they thought to be Cathay, behold ! 
it all disappeared — island and castle and palace and temple 
and city, and nothing but the tossing sea lay all about them. 




lat they had seen was 
what is called a mirage — a 
trick of the clouds and the sun 
and the sea that makes people imagine they see what they 
would like to, but really do not. But after this Columbus 
had a harder time than ever with his men, for they were sure 
he was leading them all astray. 



64 



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF BAEKNESS. 



And SO with frights and imaginings and mysteries like 
these, with strange birds flying about the ships and floating 
thines in the water that told of land somewhere about them, 
with hopes again and again disappointed, and with the 
sailors growing more and more restless and discontented, 
and muttering threats against this Italian adventurer who 
was leading the ships and sailors of the Spanish king to sure 

destruction, Columbus still 
sailed on, as full of patience 
and of faith, as certain of 
success as he had ever been. 
On the seventh of Octo- 
ber, 1492, the true record 
that Columbus was keeping 
showed that he had sailed 
twenty-seven hundred miles 
from the Canaries ; the false 
record that the sailors saw 
said they had sailed twenty- 
two hundred miles. Had 
Columbus kept straight on, 
he would have landed very soon upon the coast of Florida 
or South Carolina, and would really have discovered the 
mainland of America. But Captain Alonso Pinzon saw 
what looked like a flock of parrots flying south. This made 
him think the land lay that way ; so he begged the Admiral 
to change his course to the southward as he was sure there 




WATCHING FOR LAND. 



HOW THEY FARED ON THE SEA OF DARKNESS. 



65 



was no land to the west. Against his w ill, Columbus at last 
consented, and turning to the southwest headed for Cuba. 

But he thought he was steering for Cathay. The islands 
of Japan, were, he thought, only a few leagues away to the 
west. They were really, as you know, away across the 




THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DlbCUVEKY. 



United States and then across the Pacific Ocean, thousands 
of miles farther west than Columbus could sail. But accord- 
ing to his reckoning he hoped within a day or two to see the 
cities and palaces of this wonderful land. 

When they sailed from the Canaries a reward had been 
offered to whomsoever should first see land. This reward 
was to be a silken jacket and nearly five hundred dollars 
in money; so all the sailors were on the watch. 



66 WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 

At about ten o'clock on the evening of the eleventh of 
October, Columbus, standing on the high raised stern of the 
Santa Maria, saw a moving light, as if some one on the 
shore were running with a flaming torch. At two o'clock 
the next morning — Friday, the twelfth of October, 1492 — 
the sharp eyes of a watchful sailor on the Pinta (his name 
was Rodrigo de Triana) caught sight of a long low coast- 
line not far away. He raised the joyful shout Land, ho ! 
The ships ran in as near to the shore as they dared, and 
just ten weeks after the anchors had been hauled up in 
Palos Harbor they were dropped overboard, and the ships of 
Columbus were anchored in the waters of a new world. 

Where was it ? What was it ? Was it Cathay ? Colum- 
bus was sure that it was. He was certain that the morning 
sun would shine for him upon the marble towers and golden 
roofs of the wonderful city of the kings of Cathay. 



CHAPTER VI. 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 



A LITTLE over three hundred years ago there was a 
^^^ Pope of Rome whose name was Gregory XIII. He 
was greatly interested in learning and science, and when Ihe 
scholars and wise men of his day showed him that a mis- 




COLUMBUS SEES A I.IGHl. 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 69 

take in reckoning time had long before been made he set 
about to make it right. At that time the Pope of Rome 
had great influence with the kings and queens of Europe, 
and whatever he wished them to do they generally did. 

So they all agreed to his plan of renumbering the days 
of the year, and a new reckoning of time was made upon 
the rule that most of you know by heart in the old rhyme : 

Thirty days hath September, 
April, June and November; 
All the rest have thirty-one, 
Excepting February which alone 
Hath twenty-eight — and this, in fine, 
One year in four hath twenty-nine. 

And the order of the days of the months and the year is 
what is called, after Pope Gregory, the Gregorian Calendar. 

This change in reckoning time made, of course, all past 
dates wrong. The old dates, which were called Old Style, 
had to be made to correspond with the new dates which were 
called New Style. 

Now, according to the Old Style, Columbus discovered 
the islands he thought to be the Indies (and which have 
ever since been called the West Indies) on the twelfth of 
October, 1492. But, according to the New Style, adopted 
nearly one hundred years after his discovery, the right date 
would be the twenty-first of October. And this is why, in 
the Columbian memorial year of 1892, the world celebrated 



7© WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 

the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America 
on the twenty-first of October ; which, as you see, is the same 
as the twelfth under the Old Style of reckoning time. 

But did Columbus discover America ? What was this 
land that greeted his eyes as the daylight came on that 
Friday morning, and he saw the low green shores that lay 
ahead of his caravels ? 

As far as Columbus was concerned he was sure that he 
had found some one of the outermost islands of Cipango or 
Japan. So he dropped his anchors, ordered out his row- 
boat, and prepared to take possession of the land in the 
name of the queen of Spain, who had helped him in his 
enterprise. 

Just why or by what right a man from one country could 
sail up to the land belonging to another country and, planting 
in the ground the flag of his king, could say, " This land be- 
longs to my king ! " is a hard question to answer. But there 
is an old saying that tells us. Might makes right; and the 
servants of the kings and queens — the adventurers and ex- 
plorers of old — used to go sailing about the world with this 
idea in their heads, and as soon as they came to a land they 
had never seen before, up would go their flag, and they 
would say, This land is mine and my king's ! They would 
not of course do this in any of the well-known or " Christian 
lands " of Europe ; but they believed that all " pagan lands " 
belonged by right to the first European king whose sailors 
should discover and claim them. 




-' i." 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 73 

So Columbus lowered a boat from the Santa Maria, 
and with two of his chief men and some sailors for rowers 
he pulled off toward the island. 

But before he did so, he had to listen to the cheers and 
congratulations of the very sailors who, only a few days be- 
fore, were ready to kill him. But, you see, this man whom 
they thought crazy had really brought them to the beautiful 
land, just as he had promised. It does make such a differ- 
ence, you know, in what people say whether a thing turns 
out right or not. 

Columbus, as I say, got into his rowboat with his chief 
inspector and his lawyer. He wore a crimson cloak over 
his armor, and in his hand he held the royal banner of Spain. 
Following him came Captain Alonso Pinzon in a rowboat 
from the Pinta, and in a rowboat from the Nina Captain 
Vincent Pinzon. Each of these captains carried the ** banner 
of the green cross " on which were to be seen the initials of 
the king and queen of Spain. 

As they rowed toward the land they saw some people on 
the shore. They were not dressed in the splendid clothes 
the Spaniards expected to find the people of Cathay wearing. 
In fact, they did not have on much of anything but grease 
and paint. And the land showed no signs of the marble 
temples and gold-roofed palaces the sailors expected to find. 
It was a little, low, fiat green island, partly covered with 
trees and with what looked like a lake in the center. 

This land was, in fact, one of the three thousand keys or 



74 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 



coral islands that stretch from the capes of Florida to the 
island of Hayti, and are known as the Bahama Islands. 
The one upon which Columbus landed was called by the 
natives Guanahani, and was either the little island now marked 
on the map as Cat Island or else the one called Watling's 
Island. Just which of these it was has been discussed over 
and over again, but careful scholars have now but little 

doubt that it was the one known to- 
day as Watling's Island. 

To see no sign of glittering 
palaces and gayly 
dressed people 
— ,^--sr ^ was quite a dis- 

appointment to 
Columbus. But 
then, he said, this 
is probably the 
island farthest out 
to sea, and the people who live here are not the real Cathay 
folks. We shall see them very soon. 

So with the royal banner and the green-cross standards 
floating above him, with his captains and chief officers and 
some of the sailors gathered a])out him, while all the others 
watched him from the decks of his fleet, Columbus stepped 
upon the shore. Then he took off his hat, and holding the 
royal banner in one hand and his sword in the other he said 
aloud: I take possession of this island, which I name 




THE PLACK WHKRK COLUMBUS LANUKD. 




73 ■^ 



(I. ^ 






y 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 



77 




" THEY HAVE COME FROM 
HEAVEN," THEY SAID. 



San Salvador* and of all the islands and lands about it in 

the name of my patron and sovereign lady, Isabella, and her 

kingdom of Castile. This, or something like it, he said, for 

the exact words are not known to us. 

y/- And when he had done this the captains and sailors fell 

at his feet in wonder and admiration, 

begging him to forgive them for all the 

hard things they had said about him. 

For you have found Cathay, they cried. 

You are our leader. You will make us 

rich and powerful. Hurrah for the great 

Admiral ! 

And when the naked and astonished 
people of the island saw all this — the canoes with wings, 
as they called the ships, the richly-dressed men with white 
and bearded faces, the flags and swords, and the people 
kneeling about this grand-looking old man in the crimson 
cloak — they said to one another : These men are gods ; 
they have come from Heaven to see us. And then they, 
too, fell on the ground and worshiped these men from 
Heaven, as they supposed Columbus and his sailors to be. 

And when they found that the men from Heaven did not 
offer to hurt them, they came nearer; and the man in the 
crimson cloak gave them beads and pieces of bright cloth 
and other beautiful things they had never seen before. And 



* The island of San Salvador means the island of the Holy Saviour. Columbus and the Spanish 
explorers who followed him gave Bible or religious names to very much of the land they discovered. 



78 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 



«€^| 



this made them feel all the more certain that these men who 
had come to see them in the canoes with wings must really be 
from Heaven. So they brought them fruits 
and flowers and feathers and birds as pres- 
ents ; and both parties, the men with clothes 
and the men without clothes, got on very 
well together. 

But Columbus, as we know, had come 

across the water for one especial reason. 

He was to find Cathay, and he was to find 

,,,. it so that he could carry back to Spain the 

\\y^ gold and jewels and spices of Cathay. The 

first thing, therefore, that he tried to find 

out from the people of the island — whom 

he called " Indians," because he thought he 

had come to a part of the coast of India — 

j^jj was where Cathay might be. 

Of course they did not understand him. 
Even Louis, the interpreter, who knew a 
dozen languages and who tried them all, 
could not make out what these " Indians " 
fl/- ''lm'^«ISiSil//i said. But from their signs and actions 
and from the sound of the words they 
spoke, Columbus understood that Cathay 
was off somewhere to the southwest, and 
that the gold he was bound to find came 
from there. The " Indians " had little bits 



i^yj-i'^ft. 



iS^^I 



« 



,5- X 



THE TROPIC ISLANDS. 



*?rS^ 




THE NEW LAND. 
(« r/iis country excels all others" wrote Cohtmbus, " as the day surpasses the night. '^) 



WHAT COLUMBUS DISCOVERED. 8i 

of gold hanging in their ears and noses. So Columbus sup- 
posed that among the finer people he hoped soon to meet in 
the southwest, he should find great quantities of the yellow 
metal. He was delighted. Success, he felt, was not far off. 
Japan was near, China was near, India was near. Of this he 
was certain; and even until he died Columbus did not have 
any idea that he had found a new world — such as America 
really was. He was sure that he had simply landed upon 
the eastern coasts of Asia and that he had found what he set 
out to discover — the nearest route to the Indies. 

The next day Columbus pulled up his anchors, and hav- 
ing seized and carried off to his ships some of the poor 
natives who had welcomed him so gladly, he commenced a 
cruise among the islands of the group he had discovered. 

Day after day he sailed among these beautiful tropic 
islands, and of them and of the people who lived upon them 
he wrote to the king and queen of Spain : " This country excels 
all others as far as the day surpasses the night in splendor. 
The natives love their neighbors as themselves ; their con- 
versation is the sweetest imaginable ; their faces smiling ; 
and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to 
Your Highness there is not a better people in the world." 

Does it not seem a pity that so great a man should have 
acted so meanly toward these innocent people who loved 
and trusted him so ? For it was Columbus who first stole 
them away from their island homes and who first thought 
of making them slaves to the white men. 



82 



BOW A BOY BROUGH2' THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 



CHAPTER VII. 



HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 



rf^^ (ff(fX 



COLUMBUS kept sailing on from one island to another. 
Each new island he found would, he hoped, bring him 

nearer to Cathay and to the marble temples and golden 

palaces and splendid cities he was looking for. 

But the temples and palaces and cities did not appear. 
When the Admiral came to the coast of 
Cuba he said: This, I know, is the main- 
land of Asia. So he sent off Louis, the 
interpreter, with a letter to the "great 
Emperor of Cathay." Louis was gone 
several days ; but he found no emperor, 
no palace, no city, no gold, no jewels, no 
spices, no Cathay — only frail houses of 
bark and reeds, fields of corn and grain, 

with simple people who could tell him nothing about Cathay 

or Cipango or the Indies. 

So day after day Columbus kept on his search, sailing 

from island to island, getting a little gold here and there, 

or some pearls and silver and a lot of beautiful bird skins, 

feathers and trinkets. 




CAPTAIN ALONSO PINZON. 



HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 83 

Then Captain Alonso Pinzon, who was sailing in the 
Pinta, believed he could do better than follow the Admiral's 
lead. I know, he said, if 1 could go off on my own hook I 
could find plenty of gold and pearls, and perhaps I could 
find Cathay. So one day he sailed away and Columbus did 
not know what had become of him. 

At last Columbus, sailing on and troubled at the way 
Captain Alonso Pinzon had acted, came one day to the 
island of Hayti. If Cuba was Cathay (or China), Hayti, he 
felt sure, must be Cipango(or Japan). So he decided to sail 
into one of its harbors to spend Christmas Day. But just 
before Christmas morning dawned, the helmsman of the 
Santa Maria, thinking that everything was safe, gave the 
tiller into the hands of a boy — perhaps it was little Pedro 
the cabin boy — and went to sleep. The rest of the crew 
also were asleep. And the boy who, I suppose, felt quite 
big to think that he was really steering the Admiral's flag- 
ship, was a' little too smart; for, before he knew it, he had 
driven the Santa Maria plump upon a hidden reef. And 
there she was wrecked. They worked hard to get her off 
but it was no use. She keeled over on her side, her seams 
opened, the water leaked in, the waves broke over her, the 
masts fell out and the Santa Maria had made her last voyage. 

Then Columbus was in distress. The Pinta had deserted 
him, the Santa Maria was a wreck, the Nina w^as not nearly 
large enough to carry all his men back to Spain. And to 
Spain he must return at once. What should he do? 



84 



HOW A BOV BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 



Columbus was quick at getting out of a fix. So in this 
case he speedily decided what to do. lie set his men at 
work tearing the wreck of the Santa Maria to pieces. Out 
of her timbers and woodwork, helped out with trees from the 
woods and a few stones from the shore, he made quite a fort. 
It had a ditch and a watch-tower and a drawbridge. It 

proudly floated the 
flag of Spain. It was 
the first European fort 
in the new world. On 
its ramparts Colum- 
bus mounted the can- 
nons he had saved 
from the wreck and 
named the fort La 
Navidad — that is, 
Fort Nativity, be- 
cause it was made 
out of the ship that 
was wrecked on Christmas Day — the day of Christ's nativ- 
ity, his birthday. 

He selected forty of his men to stay in the fort until he 
should return from Spain. The most of them were quite 
willing to do this as they thought the place was a beautiful one 
and they would be kept very busy filling the fort with gold. 
Columbus told them they must have at least a ton of gold 
before he came back. He left -them provisions and powder 




FORT LA NAVIDAD. 



HOW A BOY BROUGHT 2HE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 85 

for a year, he told them to be careful and watchful, to be 
kind to the Indians and to make the year such a good one 
that the king and queen of Spain would be glad to reward 
them. And then he said good-by and sailed away for Spain. 

It was on the fourth of January, 1493, that Columbus 
turned the little Nina homeward. He had not sailed very 
far when what should he come ^oss but the lost Pinta. 
Captain Alonso Pinzon seemed very much ashamed when he 
saw the Admiral, and tried to explain his absence. Colum- 
bus knew well enough that Captain Pinzon had gone off 
gold hunting and had not found any gold. But he did not 
scold him, and both the vessels sailed toward Spain. 

The homeward voyage was a stormy and seasick one. 
Once it was so rough that Columbus thought surely the 
Nina would be wrecked. So he copied off the story of what 
he had seen and done, addressed it to the king and queen of 
Spain, put it into a barrel and threw the barrel overboard. 

But the Nina was not shipwrecked, and on the eighteenth 
of February Columbus reached the Azores. The Portuguese 
governor was so surprised when he heard this crazy Italian 
really had returned, and was so angry to think it was Spain 
and not Portugal that was to profit by his voyage that he 
tried to make Columbus a prisoner. But the Admiral gave 
this inhospitable welcomer the slip and was soon off the 
coast of Portugal. 

Here he was obliged to land and meet the king of Portu- 
gal — that same King John who had once acted so meanly 



86 HOW A BOY B 1^0 LIGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 

toward him. King John would have done so again had he 
dared. But things were quite different now. Columbus 
was a great man. He had made a successful voyage, and 
the king and queen of Spain would have made it go hard 
with the king of Portugal if he dared trouble their admiral. 
So King John had to give a royal reception to Columbus, 
and permit him to send a messenger to the king and queen 
of Spain with the news of his return from Cathay. 

Then Columbus went on board the Nina again and 
sailed for Palos. But his old friend Captain Alonso Pinzon 
had again acted badly. For he had left the Admiral in one 
of the storms at sea and had hurried homeward. Then he 
sailed into one of the northern ports of Spain, and hoping to 
get all the credit for his voyage, sent a messenger post-haste 
to the king and queen with the word that he had returned 
from Cathay and had much to tell them. And then he, too, 
sailed for Palos. 

On the fifteenth of March, 1493, just seven months after 
he had sailed away to the West, Columbus in the Nina 
sailed into Palos Harbor. The people knew the little vessel 
at once. And then what a time they made ! Columbus has 
come back, they cried. He has found Cathay. Hurrah! 
hurrah ! And the bells rang and the cannons boomed and 
the streets were full of people. The sailors were welcomed 
with shouts of joy, and the big stories they told were listened 
to with open mouths and many exclamations of surprise. 
So Columbus came back to Palos. And everybody pointed 




COLUMBUS RECEIVED BY FERDINAND AND ISABELLA AT BARCELONA. 

(" The king and queen said he had done well. " 



HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 89 

him out and cheered him and he was no longer spoken of as 
" that crazy Italian who dragged away the men of Palos to 
the Jumping-off place." 

And in the midst of all this rejoicing what should sail 
into the harbor of Palos but the Pin fa, just a few hours late ! 
And when Captain Alonso Pinzon heard the sounds of re- 
joicing, and knew that his plans to take away from Columbus 
all the glory of what had been done had all gone 
wrong, he did not even go to see his old friend and 
ask his pardon. He went away to his own house 
without seeing any one. And there he found a 
stern letter from the king and qi|een of Spain 
scolding him for trying to get the -bes^t of Colum- ^^. 
bus, and refusing to hear or see him. The way columbus has 

^ COME. 

things had turned out made Captain Alonso Pin- 
zon feel so badly that he fell sick ; and in a few days he died. 
But Columbus, after he had seen his good friend Juan 
Perez, the friar at Rabida, and told him all his adventures, 
went on to Barcelona where King Ferdinand and Queen 
Isabella were waiting for him. They had already sent him 
letters telling him how pleased they were that he had found 
Cathay, and ordering him to get ready for a second expedition 
at once. Columbus gave his directions for this, and then, in 
a grand procession that called everybody to the street or 
window or housetop, he set off for Barcelona. He reached 
the court on a fine April day and was at once received with 
much pleasure by the king and queen of Spain. 




9° 



BOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 



Columbus told them where he had been and what he 
had seen ; he showed them the gold and the pearls and the 
birds and curiosities he had brought to Spain as specimens 
of what was to be found in Cathay ; he showed them the ten 
painted and "fixed-up" Indians he had stolen and brought 
back with him. 

And the king and queen of Spain said he had done well. 
They had him sit beside them while he told his story, and 
treated this poor Italian wool-weaver as they would one of 
their great princes or mighty lords. They told him he could 
put the royal arms alongside his own on his shield or crest, 

and they bade him get together at once 
ships and sailors for a second expedition 
to Cathay — ships and sailors enough, 
they said, to get away up to the great 
cities of Cathay, where the marble temples 
and the golden palaces must be. It was 
their wish, they said, to gain the friend- 
ship of the great Emperor of Cathay, to 
trade with him and get a good share of 
his gold and jewels and spices. For, you see, no one as 
yet imagined that Columbus had discovered America. They 
did not even know that there was such a continent. They 
thoucrht he had sailed to Asia and found the rich countries 
that Marco Polo had told such big stories about. 

Columbus, you may be sure, was " all the rage " now. 
Wherever he went the people followed him, cheering and 




LOOKING AT THE 
PROCESSION 



HOW A BOY BROUGHT THE ADMIRAL TO GRIEF. 



91 



shouting, and begging him to take them with him on his 
next voyage to Cathay. 

He was as anxious as any one to get back to those beau- 
tiful islands and hunt for gold and jewels. He set to work 
at once, and on the twenty-fifth of September, 1493, with a 
fieet of seventeen ships and a company of fifteen hundred 




COLUMBUS TELLING HIS ADVENTURES TO JUAN PEREZ AT RABIDA. 

men, Columbus the Admiral set sail from Cadiz on his 
second voyage to Cathay and Cipango and the Indies. And 
this time he was certain he should find all these wonderful 
places, and bring back from the splendid cities unbounded 
wealth for the king and queen of Spain. 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



DO you not think Columbus must have felt very fine as 
he sailed out of Cadiz Harbor on his second voyage to 
the West? It was just about a year before, you know, that 
his feeble fleet of three little ships sailed from Palos port. 
His hundred sailors hated to go; his friends were few; 
everybody else said he was crazy ; his success was very 
doubtful. Now, as he stood on the high quarter-deck of his 
big flag-ship, the Maria Galante, he was a great man. By 
appointment of his king and queen he was " Admiral of the 
Ocean Seas " and " Viceroy of the Indies." He had servants 
to do as he directed ; he had supreme command over the 
seventeen ships of his fleet, large and small ; fifteen hundred 
men joyfully crowded his decks, while thousands left at 
home wished that they might go with him, too. He had 
soldiers and sailors, horsemen and footmen ; his ships were 
filled with all the things necessary for trading with the 
Indians and the great merchants of Cathay, and for building 
the homes of those who wished to live in the lands beyond 

the sea. 

Evervthin^ looked so well and everybody was so full of 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



93 



hope and expectation that the Admiral felt that now his 
fondest dreams were coming to pass and that he was a 
great man indeed. 

This was to be a hunt for gold. And so sure of success 
was Columbus that he promised the king and queen of 



■:\ ■.. 




THK HARHOR OF CADIZ. 



Spain, out of the money he should make on this voyage, to 
himself pay for the fitting out of a great army of fifty thou- 
sand foot soldiers and four thousand horsemen to drive away 
the pagan Turks who had captured and held possession of 
the city of Jerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ. For this 
had been the chief desire, for years and years, of the Chris- 



94 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



tian people of Europe. To accomplish it many brave 
knights and warriors had fought and failed. But now 
Columbus was certain he could do it. 

So, out into the western ocean sailed the great expedi- 
tion of the Admiral. He sailed first to the Canary Isles, 
where he took aboard wood and water and many cattle, 
sheep and swine. Then, on the seventeenth of October, he 

steered straight 
out into the broad 
Atlantic, and on 
Sunday, the third 
of November, he 
saw the hill-tops 
of one of the 
West India Isl- 
ands that he 
named Dominica. 
You can find it 
on your map of 
the West Indies. 
For days he 
sailed on, passing 
island after isl- 
and, landing on some and giving them names. Some of 
them were inhabited, some of them were not ; some were very 
large, some were very small. But none of them helped him 
in any way to find Cathay, so at last he steered toward Hayti 




"HE SAW THE HTLI.-TOPS OF DOMINICA." 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



95 



(or Hispaniola, as he called it) and the lit- 
tle ship-built fortress of La Navidad, where 
his forty comrades had been left. 

On the twenty-seventh of November, 
the fleet of the Admiral cast anchor off the 
solitary fort. It was night. No light was 
to be seen on the shore ; through the dark- 
ness nothing could be made out that looked 
like the walls of the fort. Columbus fired 
a cannon ; then he fired another. The 
echoes were the only answer. They must 
be sound sleepers in our fortress there, said 
the Admiral. At last, over the water he 
heard the sound of oars — or was it the dip 
of a paddle ? A voice called for the Ad- 
miral ; but it was not a Spanish voice. 
The interpreter — who was the only one 
left of those ten stolen Indians carried by 
Columbus to Spain — came to the Ad- 
miral's side ; by the light of the ship's lan- 
tern they could make out the figure of an 
Indian in his canoe. He brought presents 
from his chief. But where are my men at 
the fort? asked the Admiral. And then 
the whole sad story was told. 

The fort of La Navidad was destroyed ; 
the Spaniards were all dead; the first at- 



V j^ 






\ 



Ik 



^ 




96 TRY TNG IT AGAIN. 

tempt of Spain to start a colony in the new world was a 
terrible failure. And for it the Spaniards themselves were 
to blame. 

After Columbus had left them, the forty men in the fort 
did not do as he told them or as they had solemnly promised. 
They were lazy; they were rough ; they treated the Indians 
badly; they quarreled among themselves; some of them ran 
off to live in the woods. Then sickness came ; there were 
two ** sides," each one jealous of the other; the Indians be- 
came enemies. A fiery war-chief from the hills, whose name 
was Caonabo, led the Indians against the white men. The 
fort and village were surprised, surrounded and destroyed. 
And the little band of "conquerors" — as the Spaniards 
loved to call themselves — was itself conquered and killed. 

It was a terrible disappointment to Columbus. The 
men in whom he had trusted had proved false. The gold 
he had told them to get together they had not even found. 
His plans had all gone wrong. 

But Columbus was not the man to stay defeated. His 
fort was destroyed, his men were killed, his settlement was 
a failure. It can't be helped now, he said. I will try 
again. 

This time he would not only build a fort, he would 
build a city. He had men and material enough to do this 
and to do it well. So he set to work. 

But the place where he had built from the wreck of the 
unlucky Santa Maria his unlucky fort of La Navidad did 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



97 



not suit him. It was low, damp and unhealthy. He must 
find a better place. After looking about for some time he 
finally selected a place on the northern side of the island. 
You can find it if you look at the map of Hayti in the West 
Indies ; it is near to Cape Isabella. 

He found here a good harbor for ships, a good place on 
the rocks for a fort, and good land for gardens. Here 

Columbus laid 

out his new town, 
and called it after 
his friend the 
queen of Spain, 
the city of Isa- 
bella. 

He marked 
out a central spot 
for his park or 
square ; around 
this ran a street, 
and along this 
street he built 
larQ-e stone build- 
ings for a store- 




CAONAKO ANIJ HIS BRAVES. 



house, a church 
and a house for himself, as governor of the colony. On the 
side streets were built the houses for the people who were to 
iive in the new town, while on a rocky point with its queer 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 



little round tower looking out to sea stood the stone fort to 
protect yie little city. It was the first settlement made by 
white men in all the great new world of America. 

You must know that there are some very wise and very 

bright people who do not 
agree to this. They say that 
nearly five hundred years 
before Columbus landed, a 
Norwegian prince or viking, 
whose name was Leif Erics- 
son, had built on the banks 
of the beautiful Charles 
River, some twelve miles 
from Boston, a city which 
he called Norumbega. 

But this has not really 
been proved. It is almost 
all the fancy of a wise man 
who has studied it out for 
himself, and says he be- 
lieves there was such a city. But he does not really know 
it as we know of the city of Isabella, and so we must still 
say that Christopher Columbus really discovered America 
and built the first fort and the first city on its shores — 
although he thought he was doing all this in Asia, on the 
shores of China or Japan. 

When Columbus had his people nearly settled in their 




THE TOWER OV THE FORT. 







THE KUINS OF ISAKELLA. 

{T/ie first setllement tnade by white men in ail the great new ivorid of America.) 



X 



TRYING IT AGAIN. 




THE GRUMBLERS. 



new city of Isabella, he remembered that the main thing he 
was sent to do was to get together as much gold as possible. 
His men were already grumbling. They had come over the 
sea, they said, not to dig cellars 
and build huts, but to find gold 
— gold that should make them 
rich and great and happy. 

So Columbus set to work 
gold-hunting. At first things 
seemed to promise success. The Indians told big stories of 
gold to be found in the mountains of Hayti ; the men sent 

to the mountains discovered signs 
of gold, and at once Columbus 
sent home joyful tidings to the 
king and queen of Spain. 

Then he and his men hunted 
everywhere for the glittering yel- 
low metal. They fished for it in 
the streams ; they dug for it in the 
earth ; they drove the Indians to 
hunt for it also until the poor red- 
men learned t<^ hate the very sound 
of the word gold, and believed that 
this was all the white men lived 
for, cared for or worked for ; hold- 
ing up a piece of this hated gold the Indians would say, one 
to another : " Behold the Christian's god ! " And so it came 




STA'lUE OF LEIF ERICSSON IN BOSTON. 



I02 TRYING 12' AGAIN. 

about that the poor worried natives, who were not used to 
such hard work, took the easiest way out of it all, and told 
the Spaniards the biggest kind of lies as to where gold 
might be found — always away off somewhere else — if only 
the white men would go there to look for it. 

On the thirteenth of January, 1494, Columbus sent back 
to Spain twelve of his seventeen ships. He did not send 
back in them to the king and queen, the gold he had promised. 
He sent back the letters that promised gold; he sent back as 
prisoners for punishment some of the most discontented and 
quarrelsome of his colonists ; and, worst of all, he sent to 
the king and queen a note asking them to permit him to 
send to Spain all the Indians he could catch, to be sold as 
slaves. He said that by doing this they could make "good 
Christians " of the Indians, while the money that came from 
selling the natives would buy cattle for the colony and leave 
some money for the royal money-chests. 

It is not pleasant to think this of so great a man as 
Columbus. But it is true, and he is really the man who 
started the slave-trade in America. Of course things were 
very different in his time from what they are to-day, and peo- 
ple (lid not think so badly of this horrible business. But 
some good men did, and spoke out boldly against it. What 
they said was not of much use, however, and slavery was 
started in the new world. And from that act of Columbus 
came much sorrow and trouble for the land he found. Even 
the great war between the northern and southern sections of 



HOW 'THE 1 .ROUBLES OE THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 103 

our own United States, upon one side or the other of which 
your fathers, or your grandfathers perhaps, fought with gun 
and sword, was brought about by this act of the great Ad- 
miral Columbus hundreds of years before. 

So the twelve ships sailed back to Spain, and Columbus, 
with his five remaining ships, his soldiers and his colonists, 
remained in the new city of Isabella to keep up the hunt for 
gold or to become farmers in the new world. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 

T30TH the farmers and the gold hunters had a hard time 
^■^ of it in the land they had come to so hopefully. The 
farmers did not like to farm when they thought they could 
do so much better at gold hunting ; the gold hunters found 
that it was the hardest kind of work to get from the water 
or pick from the rocks the yellow metal they were so 
anxious to obtain. 

Columbus himself was not satisfied with the small amount 
of gold he got from the streams and mines of Hayti ; he 
was tired of the wrangling and grumbling of his men. So, 
one day, he hoisted sail on his five ships and started away 



104 



HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 




on a hunt for richer gold mines, or, perhaps, for those won- 
derful cities of Cathay he was still determined to find. 

He sailed to the south and discovered the island of Ja- 
maica. Then he coasted along the shores of Cuba. The 
great island stretched away so many miles that Columbus 
was certain it was the mainland of Asia. There was some 

excuse for this mis- 
take. The great num- 
ber of small islands 
he had sailed by all 
seemed to lie just 
as the books about 
Cathay that he had 
read said they did ; 
the trees and fruits 
that he found in these islands seemed to be just the same 
that travelers said grew in Cathay. 

To be sure the marble temples, the golden-roofed palaces, 
the gorgeous cities had not yet appeared; but Columbus was 
so certain that he had found Asia that he made all his men 
sign a paper in which they declared that the land they had 
found (which was, as you know, the island of Cuba) was 
really and truly the coast of Asia. 

This did not make it so, of course ; but it made the peo- 
ple of Spain, and the king and queen, think it was so. And 
this was most important. So, to keep the sailors from going 
back on their word and the statement they had signed, 



ALONG THE SHORE OK CUBA. 



HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 105 

Columbus ordered that if any officer should afterward say 
he had been mistaken, he should be fined one hundred dol- 
lars ; and if any sailor should say so, he should receive one 
hundred lashes with a whip and have his tongue pulled out. 
That was a curious way to discover Cathay, was it not ? 

Then Columbus, fearing another shipwreck or another mu- 
tiny, sailed back again to the city of Isabella. His men were 
discontented, his ships were battered and leaky, his hunt for 
gold and palaces had again proved a failure. He sailed 
around Jamaica ; he got as far as the eastern end of Hayti, 
and then, just as he was about to run into the harbor of Isa- 
bella, all his strength gave out. The strain and the disap- 
pointment were too much for him ; he fell very, very sick, 
and on the twenty-ninth of September, 1494, after just about 
five months of sailing and wandering and hunting, the Nina 
ran into Isabella Harbor with Columbus so sick from fever 
that he could not raise his hand or his head to give an order 
to his men. 

For five long months Columbus lay in his stone house 
on the plaza or square of Isabella a very sick man. His 
brother Bartholomew had come across from Spain with 
three supply ships, bringing provisions for the colony. So 
Bartholomew took charge of affairs for a while. 

And while Columbus lay so sick, some of the leading 
men in the colony seized the ships in which Bartholomew 
Columbus had come to his brother's aid, and sailing back to 
Spain they told the king and queen all sorts of bad stories 



io6 HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 

about Columbus. They were Spaniards. Columbus was an 
Italian. They were jealous of him because he was higher 
placed and had more to say than they had. They were 
angry to think that when he had promised to bring them to 
the gorgeous cities and the glittering gold mines of Cathay 
he had only landed them on islands which were the homes 
of naked savages, and made them work dreadfully hard for 
what little gold they could find. He had promised them 
power ; they went home poorer than when they came away. 
So they were "mad" at Columbus — just as boys and girls 
are sometimes "mad" at one another; and they told the 
worst stories they could think of about him, and called him 
all sorts of hard names, and said the king and queen of Spain 
ought to look out for " their great Admiral' or he would get 
the best of them and keep for himself the most of whatever 
he could find in the new lands. 

At last Columbus began to grow better. And when he 
knew what his enemies had done he was very much troubled 
for fear they should get the king and queen to refuse him 
any further aid. So, just as soon as he was able, on the 
tenth of March, 1496, he sailed home to Spain. 

How different was this from his splendid setting out 
from Cadiz two years before. Then everything looked bright 
and promising ; now everything seemed dark and disappoint- 
ing. The second voyage to the Indies had been a failure. 

So, tired of his hard work in trying to keep his dissatis- 
fied men in order, in trying to check the Indians who were 



BOW THE l^ROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 107- 

no longer his friends, in trying to find the gold and pearls 
that were to be got at only by hard work, in trying to make 
out just where he was and just where Cathay might be, 
Columbus started for home. Sick, troubled, disappointed, 
threatened by enemies in the Indies and by more bitter ene- 
mies at home, sad, sorry and full of fear, but yet as deter- 
mined and as brave as ever, on the tenth of March, 1496, he 
went on board his caravels with two hundred and fifty 
homesick and feversick men, and on the eleventh of June his 
two vessels sailed into the harbor of Cadiz. 

The voyage had been a tedious one. Short of food, 
storm-tossed and full of aches and pains the starving com- 
pany " crawled ashore," glad to be in their home land once 
more, and most of them full of complaints and grumblings 
at their commander, the Admiral. 

And Columbus felt as downcast as any. He came ashore 
dressed, not in the gleaming armor and crimson robes of a 
conqueror, as on his first return, but in the garb of what was 
known as a penitent — the long, coarse gown, the knotted 
girdle and peaked hood of a priest. For, you see, he did 
not know just what terrible stories had been told by his 
enemies; he did not know how the king and queen would 
receive him. He had promised them so much ; he had 
brought them so little. He had sailed away so hopefully ; 
he had come back humbled and hated. The greatest man in 
the world, he had been in 1492; and in 1496 he was unsuc- 
cessful, almost friendless and very unpopular. So you see, 



io8 



HOW THE 2 ROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 



boys and girls, that success is a most uncertain thing, and 

the man who is a hero to-day may be a beggar to-morrow. 
But, as is often the case, Columbus was too full of fear. 

He was not really 
in such disgrace as 
he thought he was. 
Though his ene- 
mies had said all 
sorts of hard things 
agai n s t him, the 
king — and espe- 
cially the queen — 
could not forget 
that he was, after 
all, the man who 
had found the new 
land for Spain ; they 
knew that even 
though he had not 
brought home the 
great riches that 
were to have been 
gathered in the In- 
dies, he had still 

found for Spain a land that would surely, in time, give to it 

riches, possessions and power. 

So they sent knightly messengers to Columbus telling him 




COLUMHUS IN THE GAKi: OK A PKIKSr. 

(^Z the church in Cadiz after his refurii frovi his secoid voyage.) 



HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 



109 



to come and see them at once, and greeting him with many 

pleasant and friendly words. Columbus was, as you must 

have seen, quick to feel glad again the moment things seemed 

to turn in his favor ; so he laid aside his penitent's gown, and 

hurried off to court. And almost the first thing he did was 

to ask the king and 

queen to fit out 

another fleet for 

him. Six ships, 

he said he should 

want this time; 

and with these 

he was certain he 

could sail into the 

yet undiscovered 

waters that lay 

beyond Hayti and upon which he knew he should find Cathay. 

I am afraid the king and queen of Spain were beginning 
to feel a little doubtful as to this still undiscovered Cathay. 
At any rate, they had other matters to think of and they did 
not seem so very anxious to spend more money on ships 
and sailors. But they talked very nicely to Columbus; they 
gave him a new title (this time it was duke or marquis); they 
made him a present of a great tract of land in Hayti, but it 
was months and months before they would help him with 
the ships and money he kept asking for. 

At last, however, the queen, Isabella, who had always had 




IHL gLLLN s Ml ^'5LiNi..LKb 



HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. 



more interest in Columbus and his plans than had the king, 
her husband, said a good word for him. The six ships were 
given him, men and supplies were put on board and on the 
twentieth of May, 1498, the Admiral set out on his third 
voyage to what every one now called the Indies. 

There was not nearly so much excitement among the 
people about this voyage. Cathay and its riches had almost 
become an old story ; at any rate it was a story that was not 
altogether believed in. Great crowds did not now follow the 
Admiral from place to place begging him to take them with 
him to the Indies. The hundreds of sick, disappointed and 
angry men who had come home poor when they expected 

to be rich, and sick when 
they expected to be strong, 
had gone through the land, 
and folks began to think 
that Cathay was after all 
only a dream, and that the 
stories of great gold and of 
untold riches which they had 
heard were but ''sailors' yarns " which no one could believe. 
So it was hard to get together a crew large enough to 
man the six vessels that made up the fleet. At last, however, 
all was ready, and with a company of two hundred men, 
besides his sailors, Columbus hoisted anchor in the little 
port of San Lucar just north of Cadiz, near the mouth of 
the Guadalquivir river, and sailed away into the West. 




FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 



HOW THE TROUBLES OF THE ADMIRAL BEGAN. m 

This time he was determined to find the continent of Asia. 
Even though, as you remember, he made his men sign a 
paper saying that the coast, of Cuba was Asia, he really 
seems to have doubted this himself. He felt that he had 
only found islands. If so, he said, Cathay must be the other 
side of those islands ; and Cathay is what I must find. 

So, with this plan in mind, he sent three of his ships to 
the little settlement of Isabella, and with the other three he 
sailed more to the southwest. On the first of August the 




IN SlGlir OF THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS OF TRINIDAD. 



ships came in sight of the three mountain peaks of the large 
island he called Trindad, or Trinity. 

Look on your map of South America and you will see 
that Tr»inidad lies almost in the mouth of the Orinoco, a 
mighty river in the northern part of South America. 

Columbus coasted about this island, and as he did so, 
looking across to the west, he saw what he supposed to be 
still another island. It was not. It was the coast of South 
America. For the first time, but without knowing it, Colum- 
bus saw the great continent he had so long been hunting 
for, though he had been seeking it under another name. 



112 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

So you see, the story of Columbus shows how his life 
was full of mistakes. In his first voyage he found an island 
and thought it was the mainland of the Eastern Hemi- 
sphere ; in his third voyage he discovered the mainland of 
the New World and thought it only an island off the coast of 
the Old World. His life was full of mistakes, but those mis- 
takes have turned out to be, for us, glorious successes. 

CHAPTER X. 

FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

TF you know a boy or a girl whose mind is set on any one 

^ thing, you will find that they are always talking about 

that thing. Is not this so ? They have what people call a 

" hobby " (which is a kind of a horse, you know), and they 

are apt, as we say, to " ride their hobby to death." 

If this is true of certain boys and girls, it is even more 
true of men and women. They get to be what we call peo- 
ple of one idea, and whatever they see or whatever they do 
always turns on that one idea. 

It was so with Columbus. All his life his one idea had 
been the finding of Asia — the Indies, or Cathay, as he called 
it — by sailing to the west. He did sail to the west. He 
did find land. And, because of this, as we have seen, all his 




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FROM PARADISE 70 PRISON. 



"5 



voyaging and all his exploring were done in the firm belief 
that he was discovering new parts of the eastern coast of 
Asia. The idea that he had found a new world never 
entered his head. 

So, when he looked toward the west, as he sailed around 
the island of Trinidad and saw the distant shore, he said it 
was a new part of Asia. He was as certain of this as he had 
before been certain that Cuba was a part of the Asiatic 
mainland. 

But when he sailed into the mouth of the great Orinoco 
River he was puzzled. For the water was no longer salt ; 
it grew fresher and fresher as he sailed on. And it rushed 
out so furiously through the two straits at the northern and 
southern ends of Trin- 
idad (which because 
of the terrible rush of 
their currentshe called 
the Lion's Mouth and 
the Dragon's Mouth) 
that he was at first un- 
able to explain it all. 

Then he had a 
curious idea. Colum- 
bus was a great reader of the Bible ; some of the Bible 
scholars of his day said that the Garden of Eden was in a far 
Eastern land where a mighty river came down through it 
from the hills of Paradise; as Columbus saw the beautiful 




IN THE dragon's MOUTH. 



ii6 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

land he had reached, and saw the great river sending down 
its waters to the sea, he fitted all that he saw to the Bible 
stories he knew so well, and felt sure that he had really dis- 
covered the entrance to the Garden of Eden. 

He would gladly have sailed across the broad bay and up 
the great river to explore this heavenly land ; but he was ill 
with gout, he was nearly blind from his sore eyes, his ships 
were shaky and leaky, and he felt that he ought to hurry 
away to the city of Isabella where his brothers, Bartholomew 
and Diego, were in charge of affairs and were, he knew, anx- 
iously waiting for him to come back. 

So at last he turned away from the lovely land that he 
thought must be Paradise and steered toward Hayti. On 
the nineteenth of August he arrived off the coast of Hayti. 
He sent a messenger with news of his arrival, and soon 
greeted his brother Bartholomew, who, when he heard of the 
Admiral's arrival, sailed at once- to meet him. 

Bartholomew Columbus had a sad story to tell his brother 
Christopher. Things had been going badly in Hayti, and 
the poor Admiral grew sicker and sicker as he listened to 
what Bartholomew had to tell. 

You have heard it said that there are black sheep in 
every flock. There were black sheep in this colony of Colum- 
bus. There were lazy men and discontented men and 
jealous men, and they made great trouble, both in the city of 
Isabella and in the new town which Bartholomew had built 
in another part of the island and called Santo Domingo. 



FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 



Such men are sure to make mischief, and these men in 
Hayti had made a lot of it. Columbus had staid so long in 
Spain that these men began to say that they knew he was 
certainly in trouble or disgrace there, that the king and queen 
were angry with him, and that his offices of viceroy and ad- 
miral were to be taken away 
from him. If this were so, 
they were going to look out 
for themselves, they said. 
They would no longer obey 
the commands of the Admi- 
ral's brothers, Bartholomew 
and Diego, whom he had left 
in charge. 

So they rose in rebellion, 
and made thinos so uncom- 
fortable for the two brothers 

that the colony was soon full Bartholomew columbus, brother of the 

ADMIRAL. 

of strife and quarreling. 

The leader of this revolt was one of the chief men in 
the colony. His name was Roldan. When Columbus and 
Bartholomew sailed into the harbor of Santo Domingo, on 
the thirtieth of August, they found that Roldan and his fol- 
lowers had set up a camp for themselves in another part of 
the island, and given out that they were determined never to 
have anything more to do with the three Columbus brothers. 

This rebellion weakened the colony dreadfully. Things 




ii8 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

looked desperate ; so desperate indeed that Columbus, after 
thinking it all over, thought that the only way to do was to 
seem to give in to Roldan and patch up some sort of an 
agreement by which they could all live together in peace. 
But all the same, he said, I will complain to the king and 
have this rebel Roldan punished. 

So the Admiral wrote Roldan a letter in which he offered 
to forgive and forget all that he had done if he would come 
back and help make the colony strong and united again. 
Roldan agreed to do this, if he could have the same position 
he held before, and if Columbus would see that his followers 
had all the land they wanted. Columbus agreed to this and 
also gave the rebels permission to use the poor natives as 
slaves on their lands. So the trouble seemed to be over for 
a while, and Columbus sent two of his ships to Spain with 
letters to the king and queen. But in these letters he ac- 
cused Roldan of rebellion and tried to explain why it was 
that things were going so badly in Hayti. 

But when these ships arrived in Spain the tidings they 
brought and the other letters sent by them only made mat- 
ters worse. People in Spain had heard so many queer 
things from across the sea that they were beginning to lose 
faith in Columbus. The men who had lost health and 
money in the unlucky second voyage of the Admiral were 
now lazy loafers about the docks, or they hung about the court 
and told how Columbus had made beggars of them, while 
they hooted after and insulted the two sons of Columbus 



FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 



119 



who were pages in the queen's train. They called the boys 
the sons of ** the Admiral of Mosquitoland." 

Then came the ships with news of Roldan's rebellion, 
but with little or no 
gold. And people said 
this was a fine viceroy 
who couldn't keep 
order among his own 
men because, no doubt, 
he was too busy hid- 
ing away for his own 
use the gold and pearls 
they knew he must 
have found in the river 
of Paradise he said he 
had discovered. 

Then came five 
shiploads of Indian 
slaves, sent to Spain 
by Columbus, and 
along with them came 
the story that Colum- 
bus had forgiven Rol- 
dan for his rebellion 
and given him lands 
and office in Hayti. 

•rr • T^ A' A *^^ ^"*' ^'^'^^ ^"^ CADIZ. 

JVing reramana {-Nogoldl TMs ha fine viceroy;' t key saUl.) 




I20 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

had never really liked Columbus and had always been sorry 
that he had given him so much power and so large a share 
in the profits. The queen, too, began to think that while 
Columbus was a good sailor, he was a very poor governor. 
But when she heard of the shiploads of slaves he had sent, 
and found out that among the poor creatures were the 
daughters of some of the chiefs, or caciques, of the Indians, 
she was very angry, and asked how " her viceroy " dared to 
use " her vassals " so without letting her know about it. 

Things were indeed beginning to look bad for Columbus. 




PADDLES AND POTS FROM THE INDIES. 



The king and queen had promised that only members of 
the Admiral's family should be sent to govern the island; 
they had promised that no one but himself should have the 
right to trade in the new lands. But now they began to go 
back on their promises. If Columbus cannot find us gold 
and spices, they said, other men can. So they gave permis- 
sion to other captains to explore and trade in the western 



IROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 



lands. And as the complaints against the Admiral kept 
coming they began to talk of sending over some one else to 
govern the islands. 

More letters came from Columbus asking the king and 
queen to let him keep up his slave-trade, and to send out 
some one to act as a judge of his quarrel with Roldan. 
Then the king and queen decided that something must be 



■flrf»nv,a^»i^ -(Pta»« '^ -N^'^^^mniM .«r™^fTi ^u -iRfto 




-^ -^J 



"HE LISTENED TO THE COMPLAINTS OF ALL THE BLACK SHEEP." 

done at once. The queen ordered the return of the slaves 
Columbus had sent over, and the king told one of his 
officers named Bobadilla to go oyer to Hayti and set things 
straight. And he sent a letter by him commanding Colum- 
bus to talk with him, to give up all the forts and arms in 
the colony and to obey Bobadilla in all things. 



122 FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 

Bobadilla sailed at once. But before he got across the 
sea matters, as we know, had been straightened out by the 
Admiral ; and when Bobadilla reached Hayti he found every- 
thing quiet there. Columbus had made friends with Roldan 
(or made believe that he had), and had got things into good 
running order again. 

This was not what Bobadilla had reckoned upon. He 
had expected to find things in such a bad way that he would 
have to take matters into his own hand at once, and become 
a greater man than the Admiral. If everything was all 
right he would have his journey for nothing and everybody 
would laugh at him. So he determined to go ahead, even 
though there was no necessity for his taking charge of 
affairs. He had been sent to do certain things, and he did 
them at once. Without asking Columbus for his advice or his 
assistance, he took possession of the forts and told every one 
that he was governor now. He said that he had come to 
set things straight, and he listened to the complaints of all 
the black sheep of the colony — and how they did crowd 
around him and say the worst things they could think of 
against the Admiral they had once been so anxious to follow. 

Bobadilla listened to all their stories. He proceeded to 
use the power the king and queen had given him to punish 
and disgrace Columbus — which was not what they meant 
him to do. He moved into the palace of the Admiral; he 
ordered the Admiral and his brothers to come to him, and 
when they came expecting to talk things over, Bobadilla 



FROM PARADISE TO PRISON. 



123 



ordered that they be seized as prisoners and traitors, that 
they be chained hand and foot and put in prison. 

Columbus's saddest day had come. The man who had 
found a new world for his king and queen, who had worked 

so hard in their service and who 
had meant to do right, although 
he had made many mistakes, was 
thrust into prison as if he were a 
thief or a murderer. The Admiral 
of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of 
the Indies, the grand man whom 
all Spain had honored and all the 
iT-f world had envied, was held as a 
prisoner in the land he had found, 
and all his powers were taken by 
a stranger. He was sick, he was 
disappointed, he was defeated in 
all his plans. And now he was 
in chains. His third voyage had 
ended the worst of all. He had 
sailed away to find Cathay ; he 
had, so he believed, found the 
Garden of Eden and the river of 
Paradise. And here, as an end to it all, he was arrested by 
order of the king and queen he had tried to serve, his power 
and position were taken from him by an insolent and unpity- 
ing messenger from Spain; he was thrown into prison and 




FEATHERS AND FRUIT FROM THE 
INDIES. 



124 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 

after a few days he was hurried with his brothers on board a 
ship and sent to Spain for trial and punishment. . How would 
it all turn out? Was it not a sad and sorry ending to his 
bright dreams of success ? 



CHAPTER XL 

HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 

T SUPPOSE you think Bobadilla was a very cruel man. 

He was. But in his time people were apt to be cruel 
to one another whenever they had the power in their own 
hands. The days in which Columbus lived were not like 
these in which we are living. You can never be too thankful 
for that, boys and girls. Bobadilla had been told to go over 
the water and set the Columbus matters straight. He had 
been brought up to believe that to set matters straight you 
must be harsh and cruel ; and so he did as he was used to 
seeing other people in power do. Even Queen Isabella did 
not hesitate to do some dreadful things to certain people she 
did not like when she got them in her power. Cruelty was 
common in those days. It was what we call the " spirit of 
the age." So you must not blame Bobadilla too much, al- 
though we will all agree that it was very hard on Columbus. 

So Columbus, as I have told you, sailed back to Spain. 




COLUMBUS IN CHAINS. 



HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 



127 



But when the officer who had charge of him and whose 
name was Villijo, had got out to sea and out of Bobadilla's 
sight, he wanted to take the' chains off. For he loved 
Columbus and it made him feel very sad to see the old 
Admiral treated like a convict or a murderer. Let me have 
these cruel chains struck off, Your 
Excellency, he said. No, no, Villijo, 
Columbus replied. Let these fetters 
remain upon me. My king and queen 
ordered me to submit and Bobadilla 
has put me in chains. I will wear 
these irons until my king and queen 
shall order them removed, and I shall 
keep them always as relics and me- 
morials of my services. 

It always makes us sad to see any 
one in great trouble. To hear of a 
great man who has fallen low or of a 
rich man \'\ ho has become poor, always 
makes us say: Is not that too bad? 
Columbus had many enemies in Spain. 
The nobles of the court, the men who "'^ man who wanted " to set 

MATTERS STRAIGHT." 

had lost money in voyages to the In- 
dies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had 
sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad 
enough about " this upstart Italian," as they called Columbus. 
But to the most of the people Columbus was still the 




128 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 

great Admiral. He was the man who had stuck to his one 
idea until he had made a friend of the queen ; who had 
sailed away into the West and proved the Sea of Darkness 
and the Jumping-off place to be only fairy tales after all ; 
who had found Cathay and the Indies for Spain. He was 
still a great man to the multitude. 

So when on a certain October day, in the year 1500, it 
was spread abroad that a ship had just come into the harbor 
of Cadiz, bringing home the great Admiral, Christopher 
Columbus, a prisoner and in chains, folks began to talk at 
once. Why, who has done this ? they cried. Is this the 
way to treat the man who found Cathay for Spain, the man 
whom the king and the queen delighted to honor, the man 
who made a procession for us with all sorts of birds and 
animals and pagan Indians ? It cannot be. Why, we all 
remember how he sailed into Palos Harbor eight years ago 
and was received like a prince with banners and proclama- 
tions and salutes. And now to bring him home in chains ! 
It is a shame ; it is cruel ; it is wicked. And when people 
began to talk in this way, the very ones who had said the 
worst things against him began to change their tone. 

As soon as the ship got into Cadiz, Columbus sent off a 
letter to a friend of his at the court in the beautiful city of 
Granada. This letter was, of course, shown to the queen. 
And it told all about what Columbus had suffered, and was 
so full of sorrow and humbleness and yet of pride in what he 
hnd been able to do, even though he had been disgraced, that 



BOW 7 HE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 129 

Queen Isabella (who was really a friend to Columbus in 
spite of her dissatisfaction with the things he sometimes did) 
became very angry at the way he had been treated. 

She took the letter to King Ferdinand, and at once both 
the king and the queen hastened to send a messenger to 
Columbus telling him how angry and sorry they were that 
Bobadilla should have dared to treat their good friend the 
Admiral so. They ordered his immediate release from im- 
prisonment ; they sent him a present of five thousand dollars 
and asked him to come to court at once. 

On the seventeenth of December, 1500, Columbus came 
to the court at Granada in the beautiful palace of the Alham- 
bra. He rode on a mule. At that time, in Spain, people were 
not allowed to ride on mules, because if they did the Spanish 
horses would not be bought and sold, as mules were so 
much cheaper and were easier to ride. But Columbus was 
sick and it hurt him to ride horseback, while he could be 
fairly comfortable on an easy-going mule. So the king and 
queen gave him special permission to come on mule-back. 

When Columbus appeared before the queen, looking so 
sick and troubled, Isabella was greatly affected. She thought 
of all he had done and all he had gone through and all he 
had suffered, and as he came to the steps of the throne the 
queen burst into tears. That made Columbus cry too, for 
he thought a great deal of the queen, and he fell at her feet 
and told her how much he honored her, and how much he 
was ready to do for her, if he could but have the chance. 



130 



HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN 



Then the king and queen told him how sorry they were 
that any one should have so misunderstood their desires and 
have treated 
their brave 
and loyal 
Admiral s o 
shamefu 11 y. 
They p rom - 
ised to make 




everything all right for him 
again, and to show him that 
they were his good friends 
now as they always had been 
since the dav he first sailed 
away to find the Indies for 
them and for Spain. 

Of course this made Co- 
lumbus feel much better. He 
had left Hayti in fear and trembling. He had come home 
expecting something dreadful was going to happen ; he 
would not have been surprised at a long imprisonment ; he 
would not even have been surprised if he had been put to 



HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 



131 



death — for the kings and queens and high lords of his day 
were very apt to order people put to death if they did not 
like what had been done. The harsh way in which Boba- 
dilla had treated him made him think the king and queen 
had really ordered it. Perhaps they had ; and perhaps the 
way in which the people cried out in indignation when they 
saw the great Admiral brought ashore in chains had its in- 
fluence on Queen Isabella. King Fer- 

dinand really cared nothing about it. 
He would gladly have seen Columbus 
put in prison for life ; but the queen 
had very much to say about things in 
her kingdom, and so King Ferdinand 
made believe he was sorry and talked 
quite as pleasantly to Columbus as did 
the queen. 

Now Columbus, as you must have 
found out by this time, was as quick to 
feel glad as he was to feel sad. And 
when he found that the king and queen 
were his friends once more, he became 
full of hope again and began to say where he would go and 
what he would do when he went back again as Viceroy 
of the Indies and Admiral of the Ocean Seas. He begged 
the queen to let him go back again at once, with ships and 
sailors and the power to do as he pleased in the islands he 
had found and in the lands he hoped to find. 




THE COURT OF THE LIONS IN 
THE ALHAMBRA. 



132 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 

They promised him everything, for promising is easy. 
But Columbus had once more to learn the truth of the old 
Bible warning that he had called to mind years before on 
the Bridge of Pinos: Put not your trust in princes. 

The king and queen talked very nicely and promised 
much, but to one thing King Ferdinand had made up his 
mind — Columbus should never go back again to the Indies 
as viceroy or governor. And King Ferdinand was as stub- 
born as Columbus was persistent. 

Not very much gold had yet been brought back from the 
Indies, but the king and queen knew from the reports of 
those who had been over the seas and kept their eyes open 
that, in time, a great deal of gold and treasure would come 
from there. So they felt that if they kept their promises to 
Columbus he would take away too large a slice of their 
profits, and if they let him have everything to say there it 
would not be possible to let other people, who were ready to 
share the profits with them, go off discovering on their 
own hook. 

So they talked and delayed and sent out other expedi- 
tions and kept Columbus in Spain, unsatisfied. Another 
governor was sent over to take the place of Bobadilla, for 
they soon learned that that ungentlemanly knight was not 
even so good or so strict a governor as Columbus had 
been. • 

Almost two years passed in this way and still Columbus 
staid in Spain. At last the king and queen said he might 



HO IV THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 133 

go if he would not go near Hayti and would be sure to find 
other and better gold lands. 

Columbus did not relish being told where to go and where 
not to go like this ; but he promised. And on the ninth of 
May, 1502, with four small caravels and one hundred and 
fifty men, Christopher Columbus sailed from Cadiz on his 
fourth and last voyage to the western world. 

He was now fifty-six years old. That is not an age at 
which we would call any one an old man. But Columbus 
had grown old long before his time. Care, excitement, expos- 
ure, peril, trouble and worry had made him white-haired and 
wrinkled. He was sick, he was nearly blind, he was weak, he 
was feeble — but his determination was just as firm, his hope 
just as high, his desire just as strong as ever. He was bound, 
this time, to find Cathay. 

And he had one other wish. He had enemies in Hayti ; 
they had laughed and hooted at him when he had been 
dragged off to prison and sent in chains on board the ship. 
He did wish to get even with them. He could not forgive 
them. He wanted to sail into the harbor of Isabella and 
Santo Domingo with his four ships and to say : See, all of 
you ! Here I am again, as proud and powerful as ever. 
The king and queen have sent me over here once more with 
ships and sailors at my command. I am still the Admiral 
of the Ocean Seas and all you tried to do against me has 
amounted to nothing. 

This is not the right sort of a spirit to have, either for 



134 



HO IV THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 



men or boys ; it is not wise or well to have it gratified. For- 
giveness is better than vengeance ; kindliness is better than 
pride. 

At any rate, it was not to be gratified with Columbus. 
When his ships arrived off the coast of Hayti, although his 

orders from the king and 



queen were not to stop at 
the island going over, the 
temptation to show himself 
was too strong. He could 
not resist it. So he sent 
word to the new governor, 
whose name was Ovando, 
that he had arrived with his 
fleet for the discovery of new 
lands in the Indies, and that 
he wished to come into Santo 
Domingo Harbor as one of 
his ships needed repairs ; he 
would take the opportunity, he said, of mending his vessel 
and visiting the governor at the same time. 

Now it so happened that Governor Ovando. was just 
about sending to Spain a large fleet. And in these shipswere 
to go some of the men who had treated Columbus so badly. 
Bobadilla, the ex-governor, was one of them ; so was the 
rebel Roldan who had done so much mischief ; and there 
were others among the passengers and prisoners whom 




"I AM STILL THE ADMIRAL?" 




THE OLD CASTLE AND WATER BATTERIES AT SANTO DOMINGO. 



BOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WEN 2' AGAIN. 



^2>7 



Columbus disliked or who hated Columbus. There was also 
to go in the fleet a wonderful cargo of gold — the largest 
amount yet sent across to Spain. There were twenty-six ships 
in all, in the great gold fleet, and the little city of Santo 
Domingo was filled with excitement and confusion. 

We cannot altogether make out whether Governor Ovando 
was a friend to Columbus or not. At any rate, he 
felt that it would be unwise and unsafe for Colum- 
bus to come into the harbor or show himself in 
the town when so many 

of his bitter enemies ^-^7^ fe^^^^ (^^ 

were there. So he sent 
back word to Columbus 
that he was sorry, but 
that really he could not 
let him come in. 

How bad that must 
have made the old Ad- 
miral feel ! To be re- 
fused admission to the 
place he had found and built up for Spain ! It was unkind, 
he said ; he must and would go in. 

Just then Columbus, who was a skillful sailor and knew 
all the signs of the sky, and all about the weather, happened 
to notice the singular appearance of the sky, and saw that 
there was every sign that a big storm was coming on. So 
he sent word to Governor Ovando again, telling him of thi'^., 




GETIING READY I HE 
GOLD FLEET. 



^3^ 



HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 



and asking permission to run into the harbor of Santo 
Domingo with his ships to escape the coming storm. 

But the governor could not see that any storm was com- 
ing on. He said: Oh! that is only another way for the Ad- 
miral to try to get 
around meand get 
me to let him in. 
I can't do it. So 
he sent back word 
a second time 
that he really 
could not let 
Columbus come 
in. I know you 
are a very clever 
sailor, he said, 
but, really, I 
think you must 
be mistaken 
about this storm. 
At any rate, you 
will have time 
to go somewhere else before it comes on, and I shall be 
much obliged if you will. 

Now, among the twenty-six vessels of the gold fleet was 
one in which was stored some of the gold that belonged to 
Columbus as his share, according to his arrangement with 




CORNER OF THE CITY WALL AND SEN 1 KV BUX, SANTO DOMINGO. 



HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 139. 

the king and queen. If a storm came on, this vessel would 
be in danger, to say nothing of all the rest of the fleet. So 
Columbus sent in to Governor Ovando a third time. He 
told him he was certain a great storm was coming. And he 
begged the governor, even if he was not allowed to come up 




THE WRECK OF Eo'baDILLA'S SHIP. 



to Santo Domingo, by all means to keep the fleet in the har- 
bor until the storm was over. If you don't, there will surely 
be trouble, he said. And then he sailed with his ships along 
shore looking for a safe harbor. 

But the people in Santo Domingo put no faith in the 
Admiral's " probabilities." There will be no storm, the cap- 



I40 HOW THE ADMIRAL CAME AND WENT AGAIN. 

tains and the officers said. If there should be our ships are 
strong enough to stand it. The Admiral Columbus is get- 
ting to be timid as he grows older. And in spite of the old 
sailor's warning, the big gold fleet sailed out of the harbor 
of Santo Domingo and headed for Spain. 

But almost before they had reached the eastern end of 
the island of Hayti, the storm that Columbus had prophesied 
burst upon them. 

It was a terrible tempest. Twenty of the ships went to 

the bottom. The great gold fleet was destroyed. The ene- 

_^,,^^ mies of Columbus — Boba- 

^"^^^^^J^* _ :S^ dilla, Roldan and the rest 

^^^^^^^^^^te^^^r^"""^" were drowned. Only a few 

^j--' -^— -- ^-^- of the ships managed to get 

"BROKEN AND SHATTERED." baclc luto Sauto Domlugo 

Harbor, broken and shat- 
tered. And the only ship of all the great fleet that got safely 
through the storm and reached Spain all right was the one 
that carried on board the gold that belonged to Columbus. 
Was not that singular? 

Then all the friends of Columbus cried : How wonderful ! 
Truly the Lord is on the side of the great Admiral ! 

But his enemies said : This Genoese is a wizard. He 
was mad because the governor would not let him come into 
the harbor, and he raised this storm in revenge. It is a dan- 
gerous thing to interfere with the Admiral's wishes. 

For you see in those days people believed in witches and 



HOPV THE ADMIRAL FLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 141 

spells and all kinds of fairy-book things like those, wlien 
they could not explain why things happened. And when 
they could not give a good reason for some great disaster 
or for some stroke of bad luck, they just said : It is witch- 
craft ; and left it so. 




A FRAGMENT OF THE ALHAMBRA. 



CHAPTER XII. 



HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

"\ ^ 7'HILE the terrible storm that wrecked the great gold 
^ ^ fleet of the governor was raging so furiously, Colum- 
bus with his four ships was lying as near shore as he dared 
in a little bay farther down the coast of Hayti. Here he 
escaped the full fury of the gale, but still his ships suffered 
greatly, and came very near being shipwrecked. They be- 
came separated in the storm, but the caravels met at last after 
the storm was over and steered away for the island of Jamaica. 
For several days they sailed about among the West 
India Islands ; then they took a westerly course, and on the 
thirtieth of July, Columbus saw before him the misty out- 
lines of certain high mountains which he supposed to be 



142 



HOW THE ADMIRAL FLAYhD ROBINSON CRUSOE. 



somewhere in Asia, but which we now know were the Coast 
Range Mountains of Honduras. And Honduras, you re- 
member, is a part of Central America. 

Just turn to the map of Central America in your geog- 
raphy and find Honduras. The mountains, you see, are 
marked there; and on the northern coast, at the head of a 
fine bay, you will notice the seaport town of Truxillo. And 




OFF THE COAST OF HONDURAS. 



that is about the spot where, for the first time, Columbus 
saw the mainland of North America. 

As he sailed toward the coast a great canoe came close 
to the ship. It was almost as large as one of his own 
caravels, for it was over forty feet long and fully eight feet 
wide. It was paddled by twenty-five Indians, while in the 
middle, under an awning of palm-thatch sat the chief Indian, 
or cacique, as he was called. A curious kind of sail had 
been rigged to catch the breeze, and the canoe was loaded 
with fruits and Indian merchandise. 



HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 145 

This canoe surprised Columbus very much. He had 
seen nothing just like it among the other Indians he had 
visited. The cacique and his people, too, were dressed in 
clothes and had sharp swords and spears. He thought of 
the great galleys of Venice and Genoa ; he remembered the 
stories that had come to him of the people of Cathay ; he 
believed that, at last, he had come to the right place. The 
shores ahead of him were, he was sure, the coasts of the 
Cathay he was hunting for, and these people in " the galley 
of the cacique " were much nearer the kind of people he 
was expecting to meet than were the poor naked Indians of 
Hayti and Cuba. 

In a certain way he was right. These people in the big 
canoe were, probably, some of the trading Indians of Yucatan, 
and beyond them, in what we know to-day as Mexico, was a 
race of Indians, known as Aztecs, who were what is called 
half-civilized ; for they had cities and temples and stone houses 
and almost as much gold and treasure as Columbus hoped 
to find in his fairyland of Cathay. But Columbus was not 
to find Mexico. Another daring and cruel Spanish captain, 
named Cortez, discovered the land, conquered it for Spain, 
stripped it of its gold and treasure, and killed or enslaved its 
brave and intelligent people. 

After meeting this canoe, Columbus steered for the dis- 
tant shore. He coasted up and down looking for a good 
harbor, and on the seventeenth of August, 1502, he landed 
as has been told you, near what is now the town of Truxillo, 



146 



HOW THE ADMIRAL FLAYED KOBLNSON CRUSOE. 



in Honduras. There, setting up the banner of Castile, he 
took possession of the country in the name of the king and 
queen of Spain. 

For the first time in his life Columbus stood on the real 
soil of the New World. All the islands he had before dis- 
covered and colonized were but outlying pieces of America. 
Now he was really upon the American Continent. 

But he did not know it. To him it was but a part of 
Asia. And as the main purpose of this fourth voyage was 
to find a way to sail straight to India — which he supposed 
lay somewhere to the south — he set off on his search. The 



^Scfp 



-I 
I 

i 







THE PEOPLE OF HONDURAS SEE THE SHIPS OF THE ADMIRAL. 



Indians told him of " a narrow place " that he could find by 
sailing farther south, and of a " great water '' beyond it. 
This "narrow place " was the Isthmus of Panama, and the 
"great water" beyond it was, of course, the Pacific Ocean. 
Lut Columbus thought that by a "narrow place" they 



HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 147 

meant a strait instead of an isthmus. If he could but find 
that strait, he could sail through it into the great Bay of 
Bengal which, as you know and as he had heard, washes the 
eastern shore of India. 

So he sailed along the coasts of Honduras and Nicaragua 
trying to find the strait he was hunting for. Just look at 
your map and see how near he was to the way across to the 
Pacific that men are now digging out, and which, as the 
Nicaragua Canal, will connect the Atlantic and the Pacific 
Oceans. And think how near he was to finding that Pacific 
Ocean over which, if he could but have got across the 
Isthmus of Panama, he could have sailed to the Cathay and 
the Indies he spent his life in trying to find. But if he had 
been fortunate enough to get into the waters of the Pacific, I 
do not believe it would have been so lucky for him, after all. 
His little ships, poorly built and poorly provisioned, could 
never have sailed that great ocean in safety, and the end 
might have proved even more disastrous than did the 
Atlantic voyages of the Admiral. 

He soon understood that he had found a richer land than 
the islands he had thus far discovered. Gold and pearls were 
much more plentiful along the Honduras coast than they 
were in Cuba and Hayti, and Columbus decided that, after 
he had found India, he would come back by this route and 
collect a cargo of the glittering treasures. 

The land was called by the Indians something that 
sounded very much like Veragua. This was the name 



148 



HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 



Columbus gave to it ; and it was this name, Veragua, that 
was afterward given to the family of Columbus as its title ; 
so that, to-day, the living descendant of Christopher Colum- 
bus in Spain is called the Duke of Veragua. 

But as Columbus sailed south, along what is called *' the 
Mosquito Coast," the weather grew stormy and the gales 
were severe. His ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the 
food was running low; the sailors began to grumble and 




A GOLD HUNT IN VKRAGUA. 



complain and to say that if they kept on in this way they 
would surely starve before they could reach India. 

Columbus, too, began to grow uneasy. His youngest son, 
Ferdinand, a brave, bright little fellow of thirteen, had come 
with him on this voyage, and Columbus really began to be 
afraid that something might happen to the boy, especially if 
the crazy ships should be wrecked, or if want of food should 
make them all go hungry. So at last he decided to give 



HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 



149 




ON THE MOSQUITO COAST. 



Up hunting for the strait that should lead him into the Bay 
of Bengal ; he felt obliged, also, to give up his plan of going 
back to the Honduras coast for gold and pearls. He turned 
his ships about and headed for Hayti where he hoped he 
could get Governor Ovando to give him better ships so that 
he could try it all 
over again. 

Here, you see, 
was still another 
disappointing de- 
feat for Colum- 
bus. For after 
he had been on 
the American 

coast for almost a year ; after he had come so near to what 
he felt to be the long-looked-for path to the Indies; after 
most wonderful adventures on sea and land, he turned his 
back on it all, without really having accomplished what he 
set out to do and, as I have told you, steered for Hayti. 

But it was not at all easy to get to Hayti in those leaky 
ships of his. In fact it was not possible to get there with 
them at all; for on the twenty-third of June, 1503, when he 
had reached the island of Jamaica he felt that his ships 
would not hold out any longer. They were full of worm- 
holes ; they were leaking badly; they were strained and 
battered from the storms. He determined, therefore, to find 
a good harbor somewhere on the island of Jamaica and go in 



150 HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

there for repairs. But he could not find a good one; his 
ships grew worse and worse ; every day's delay was danger- 
ous ; and for fear the ships would sink and carry the crews 
to the bottom of the sea, Columbus decided to run them 
ashore anyhow. This he did ; and on the twelfth of August, 
1503, he deliberately headed for the shore and ran his ships 
aground in a little bay on the island of Jamaica still known 
as Sir Christopher's Cove, And there the fleet was wrecked. 
The castaways lashed the four wrecks together; they 
built deck-houses and protections so as to make themselves 
as comfortable as possible, and for a whole year Columbus 
and his men lived there at Sir Christopher's Cove on the 

beautiful island of 
Jamaica. 

It proved any- 
thing but beautiful 
for them, however. 
It makes a good 
deal of difference, 
you know, in en- 
joying things 
whether you are 
well and happy. 
If you are hungry and can't get anything to eat, the sky 
does not look so blue or the trees so green as if you were sit- 
ting beneath them with a jolly picnic party and with plenty 
of lunch in the baskets. 




SIR CHUIsroPHER S COVE, ON THE ISLAND OK JAMAICA. 
(IVJwre ColiDiibus played Rolnnscn Crusoe.) 




ON THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA. 

Where the year spent by Columbus and his companions was one (t/"" horror, peril, sickness 

and starvation. ") 



HOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 153 

It was no picnic for Columbus and his companions. 
That year on the island of Jamaica was one of horror, of 
peril, of sickness, of starvation. Twice, a brave comrade 
named Diego Mendez started in an open boat for Hayti to 
bring relief. The first time he was nearly shipwrecked, but 
the second time he got away all right. And then for months 
nothing was heard of him, and it was supposed that he had 
been drowned. But the truth was that Governor Ovando 
had an idea that the king and queen of Spain were tired of 
Columbus and would not feel very bad if they never saw him 
again. He promised to send help, but did not do so for fear 
he should get into trouble. And the relief that the poor 
shipwrecked people on Jamaica longed for did not come. 

Then some of the men who were with Columbus mu- 
tinied and ran away. In fact, more things happened during 
this remarkable fourth voyage of Columbus than I can 
begin to tell you about. The story is more wonderful than 
is that of Robinson Crusoe, and when you are older you must 
certainly read it all and see just what marvelous adventures 
Columbus and his men met with and how bravely the little 
Ferdinand Columbus went through them all. For when 
Ferdinand grew up he wrote a life of his father, the Admiral, 
and told the story of how they all played Robinson Crusoe 
at Sir Christopher's Cove. 

At last the long-delayed help was sent by Governor 
Ovando, and one day the brave Diego Mendez came sailing 
into Sir Christopher's Cove. And Columbus forgave the 



154 



BOW THE ADMIRAL PLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 



rebels who had run away ; and on the twenty-eighth of June, 
1504, they all sailed away from the place, that, for a year 
past, had been almost worse than a prison to them all. 

On the fifteenth of August, the rescued crews sailed into 
the harbor of Santo Domingo. The governor, Ovando, who 
had reluctantly agreed to send for Columbus, was now in a 
hurry to get him away. Whether the governor was afraid 
of him, or ashamed because of the way he had treated him, 

or whether he felt that 
Columbus was no longer 



held so high in Spain, 
and that, therefore, it 
was not wise to make 
much of him, I cannot 
say. At any rate he 
hurried him off to Spain, 
and on the twelfth of 




DIEGO MENDEZ GOING VOK HELP. 



September, 1504, Co- 
lumbus turned his back forever on the new world he had 
discovered, and with two ships sailed for Spain. 

He had not been at sea but a day or two before he found 
that the ship in which he and the boy Ferdinand were sail- 
ing was not good for much. A sudden storm carried away 
its mast and the vessel was sent back to Santo Domingo. 
Columbus and Ferdinand, with a few of the men, went on 
board the other ship which was commanded by Bartholomew 
Columbus, the brother of the Admiral, who had been with 



HOW THE ADMIRAL FLAYED ROBINSON CRUSOE. 



155 



him all through the dreadful expedition. At last they saw 
the home shores again, and on the seventh of November, 
1504, Columbus sailed into the harbor of San Lucar, not far 
from Cadiz. 

He had been away from Spain for fully two years and a 
half. He had not accomplished a single thing he set out to 
do. He had met with disappointment and disaster over and 
over again, and had left the four ships that had been given 
him a total wreck upon the shores of Jamaica. He came 
back poor, unsuccessful, unnoticed, and so ill that he could 
scarcely get ashore. 

And so the fourth voyage of the great Admiral ended. 
It was his last. His long sickness had almost made him 
crazy. He said and did many odd things, such as make us 

think, nowadays, that people 
have, as we call it, " lost their 
minds." But he was certain 
of one thing — the king and 
queen of Spain had not kept 
the promises they had made 
him, and he was determined, if 
he lived, to have justice done 
him, and to make them do as they said they would. 

They had told him that only himself or one of his family 
should be Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the 
New Lands ; they had sent across the water others, who were 
not of his family, to govern what he had been promised for 




STORM-TOSSED IN THE INDIES. 



156 



HOW THE ADMIRAL FLAYED ROBLNSON CRUSOE. 



his own. They had told him that he should have a certain 
share of the profits that came from trading and gold hunting 
in the Indies ; they had not kept this promise either, and he 
was poor when he was certain he ought to be rich. 

So, when he was on land once more, he tried hard to get 
to court and see the king and queen. But he was too sick. 




"//./'- 



SEVILLE THE BEAUTIFUL. 



( The " tower of gold " in the foiegromid is said to have been built to store the gold in that came from the 

New World.) 

He had got as far as beautiful Seville, the fair Spanish city 
by the Guadalquivir, and there he had to give up and go to 
bed. And then came a new disappointment. He was to 
lose his best friend at the court. For when he had been 
scarcely two weeks in Spain, Queen Isabella died. 

She was not what would be considered in these days 
either a particularly good woman, or an especially good 
queen. She did many cruel things; and while she talked 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



157 



much about doing good, she was generally looking out for 
herself most of all. But that was not so much her fault as 
the fault of the times in which she lived. Her life was not 
a happy one ; but she had always felt kindly toward Colum- 
bus, and when he was where he could see her and talk to 
her, he had always been able to get her to side with him 
and grant his wishes. 

Columbus was now a very sick man. He had to keep 
his bed most of the time, and this news of the queen's death 
made him still worse, for he felt that now no one who had 
the ** say " would speak a good word for the man who had 
done so much for Spain, and given to the king and queen the 
chance to make their nation great and rich and powerful. 



CHAPTER Xni. 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



A NY one who is sick, as some of you may know, is apt to 
^^^ be anxious and fretful and full of fears as to how he 
is going to get along, or who will look out for his family. 
Very often there is no need for this feeling ; very often it is a 
part of the complaint from which the sick person is suffering. 
In the case of Columbus, however, there was good cause^ 
for this depressed and anxious feeling. King Ferdinand, 



158 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



after Queen Isabella's death, did nothing to help Columbus. 
He would not agree to give the Admiral what he called his 
rights, and though Columbus kept writing letters from his 
sick room asking for justice, the king would do nothing 
for him. And when the king's smile is turned to a frown, 
the fashion of the court is to frown, too. 

So Columbus had no 
friends at the king's court. 
Diego, his eldest son, was 
still one of the royal pages ; 
but he could do nothing. 
Without friends, without in- 
fluence, without opportunity, 
Columbus began to feel that 
he should never get his rights 
unless he could see the king 
himself. And sick though 
he was he determined to 
try it. 

It must have been sad 




I'HK ARMS OK Col.UMIiL:!. 

{Containing the castle of Castile, the lion of Arragon, 



the anchors of a sea captain and the islands of a eUOUgh tO SCC thlS slck old 

discoverer. ) 

man drag himself feebly to 
the court to ask for justice from the king whom he had en. 
riched. You would think that when King Ferdinand really 
saw Columbus at the foot of the throne, and when he remem- 
bered all that this man had done for him and for Spain, and 
how brave and persistent and full of determination to do 







c? s 



R s 



THE END OF THE STORY. i6i 

great things the Admiral once had been, he would at least 
have given the old man what was justly due him. 

But he would not. He smiled on the old sailor, and said 
many pleasant things and talked as if he were a friend, but he 
would not agree to anything Columbus asked him; and the 
poor Admiral crawled back to his sick bed again, and gave 
up the struggle. I have done all that I can do, he said to 
the few friends who remained faithful to him ; I must leave 
it all to God. He has always helped me when things were 
at the worst. 

And God helped him by taking him away from all the 
fret, and worry, and pain, and struggle that made up so much 
of the Admiral's troubled life. On the twentieth of May, 
1506, the end came. In the house now known as Number 
7 Columbus Avenue, in the city of Valladolid, in Northern 
Spain, with a few faithful friends at his side, he signed 
his will, lay back in bed and saying trustfully these words : 
Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit! the Admiral 
of the Ocean Seas, the Viceroy of the Indies, the Discov- 
erer of a New World, ended his fight for life. Christopher 
Columbus was dead. 

He was but sixty years old. With Tennyson, and Whit- 
tier, and Gladstone, and De Lesseps living to be over eighty, 
and with your own good grandfather and grandmother, 
though even older than Columbus, by no means ready to be 
called old people, sixty years seems an early age to be so 
completely broken and bent and gray as was he. But trouble, 



i6. 



THE END OF 2HE STORY. 



and care, and exposure, and all the worries and perils of his 
life of adventure, had, as you must know, so worn upon 
Columbus that when he died he seemed to be an old, old 
man. He was white-haired, you remember, even before he 




THE HOUSE IN VALLADOLID IN WHICH COLUMBUS DIED. 

discovered America, and each year he seemed to grow older 
and grayer and more feeble. 

And after he had died in that lonely house in Valladolid, 
the world seems for a time to have almost forgotten him. 
A few friends followed him to the grave ; the king, for whom 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



163 



he had done so much, did not trouble himself to take any 
notice of the death of his Admiral, whom once he had been 
forced to honor, receive and reward. The city of Valladolid, 
in which Columbus died, was one of those fussy little towns 
in which everybody knew what was happening" next door, 
and talked and 
argued about 
whatever hap- 
pened upon its 
streets and' in 
its homes ; and 
yet even Val- 
ladolid hardly 
seemed to 
know of the 
presence with- 
in its gates of 
the sick " Vice- 
roy of the Indies." Not until four weeks after his death did 
the Valladolid people seem to realize what had happened ; 
and then all they did was to write down this brief record : 
"The said Admiral is dead." 

To-day, the bones of Columbus inclosed in a leaden casket 
lie in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo. People have dis- 
puted about the place where the Discoverer of America was 
born ; they are disputing about the place where he is buried. 
But as it seems now certain that he was born in Genoa, so it 




A CLOISTER IN THE OLD CATHEDRAL IN SANTO DOMINGO. 



164 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



seems also certain that his bones are really in the tomb in the 
old Cathedral at Santo Domingo, that old Haytian city which 
he founded, and where he had so hard a time. 

At least a dozen places in the Old World and the New 
have built monuments and statues in his honor; in the 
United States, alone, over sixty towns and villages bear his 

name, or the kindred 
one of Columbia. The 
whole world honors 
him as the Discoverer 
of America; and yet 
the very name that the 
Western Hemisphere 
bears comes not from 
the man who dis- 
covered it, but from 
his friend and comrade 
Americus Vespucius. 

Like Columbus, 
this Americus Vespu- 
cius was an Italian ; 
like him, he was a dar- 
ing sailor and a fearless 
adventurer, sailing into 
strange seas to see what he could find. He saw more of the 
American coast than did Columbus, and not being so full 
of the gold-hunting and slave-getting fever as was the Ad- 




AMERICUS Vh-SPUClUS. 

{Bor)i 1451 — died 1512.) 



2 HE END OE THE STORY. 167 

miral, he brought back from his four voyages so much infor- 
mation about the new-found lands across the sea, that 
scholars, who cared more for news than gold, became inter- 
ested in what he reported. And some of the map-makers 
in France, when they had to name the new lands in the 
West that they drew on their maps — the lands that were 
not the Indies, nor China, nor Japan — called them after the 
man who had told them so much about them — Americus 
Vespucius. And so it is that to-day you live in America 
and not in Columbia, as so many people have thought this 
western world of ours should he named. 

And even the titles, and riches, and honors that the king 
and queen of Spain promised to Columbus came very near 
being lost by his family, as they had been by himself. It was 
only by the hardest work, and by keeping right at it all the 
time, that the Admiral's eldest son, Diego Columbus, almost 
squeezed out of King Ferdinand of Spain the things that 
had been promised to his father. 

But Diego was as plucky, and as brave, and as persistent 
as his father had been ; then, too, he had lived at court so 
long — he was one of the queen's pages, you remember — 
that he knew just what to do and how to act so as to get 
what he wanted. And at last he got it. 

He was made Viceroy over the Indies; he went across 
the seas to Hayti, and in his palace in the city of Santo 
Domingo he ruled the lands his father had found, and which 
for centuries were known as the Spanish Main ; he was called 



1 68 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



Don Diego ; he married a high-born lady of Spain, the niece 
of King Ferdinand; he received the large share of "the 
riches of the Indies " that his father had worked for, but 
never received. And the family of Christopher Columbus, 
the Genoese adventurer — under the title of the Dukes of 
Veragua^ have, ever since Don Diego's day, been of what 
is called " the best blood of Spain." 

If you have read this story of Christopher Columbus 















RUINS OF THE TALACE OF DIEGO IN SANTO DOMINGO. 



aright, you must have come to the conclusion that the life 
of this Italian sea captain who discovered a new world was 
not a happy one. From first to last it was full of disap- 
pointment. Only once, in all his life, did he know what 
happiness and success meant, and that was on his return 
from his .first voyage, when he landed amid cheers of wel- 



THE END OF THE STORY. 



171 



come at Palos, and marched into Barcelona in procession like 
a conqueror to be received as an equal by his king and queen. 

Except for that little taste of glory, how full of trouble 
was his life! He set out to find Cathay and bring back its 
riches and its treasures. He did not get within five thou- 
sand miles of Cathay. He returned from his se:ond voyage 
a penitent, bringing only tidings of disaster. He returned 
from his third voyage in disgrace, a prisoner and in chains, 
smarting under false charges of theft, cruelty and treason. 
He returned from his fourth voyage sick unto death, un- 
noticed, unhonored, unwelcomed. 

From first to last he was misunderstood. His ideas 
were made fun of, his efforts were treated with contempt, 
and even what he did was not believed, or was spoken of as 
of not much account. A career that began in scorn ended 
in neglect. He died unregarded, and for years no one gave 
him credit for what he had done, nor honor for what he 
had brought about. 

Such a life would, I am sure, seem to all boys and girls, 
but a dreary prospect if they felt it was to be theirs or that 
of any one they loved. And yet what man to-day is more 
highly honored than Christopher Columbus? People forget 
all the trials and hardships and sorrows of his life, and think 
of him only as one of the great successes of the world — the 
man who discovered America. 

And out of his life of disaster and disappointment two 
thino^s stand forth that all of us can honor and all of us should 



172 



THE END OF THE STORY. ♦ 



wish to copy. These are his sublime persistence and his 
unfaltering faith. Even as a boy, Columbus had an idea of 
what he wished to try and what he was bound to do. He 
kept right at that idea, no matter what might happen to 

annoy him or set 
him back. 

It was the faith 
and the persistence 
of Columbus that 
discovered Amer- 
ica and opened the 
way for the mil- 
lions who now call 
it their home. It 
is because of these 
qualities that we 
honor him to-day; 
it is because this 




A MEDAL OK COLUMBUS. 



( The Old World and the New clasphig hands over the head 0/ the great 

Admiral.) faith aud persis- 

tence ended as they did in the discovery of a new world, 
that to-day his fame is immortal. 

Other men were as brave, as skillful and as wise as he. 
Following in his track they came sailing to the new lands ; 
they explored its coasts, conquered its red inhabitants, and 
peopled its shores with the life that has made America to- 
day the home of millions of white men and millions of free 
men. But Columbus showed the way. 



HOW THE STOHY TURNS OUT. 173 



CHAPTER XIV. 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 



A 7[ /"HENEVER you start to read a story that you hope 
* * will be interesting, you always wonder, do you not, 
how it is going to turn out? Your favorite fairy tale or 
wonder story that began with ** once upon a time," ends, 
does it not, " so the prince married the beautiful princess, 
and they lived happy ever after? " 

Now, how does this story that we have been reading to- 
gether turn out? You don't think it ended happily, do you ? 
It was, in some respects, more marvelous than any fairy tale 
or wonder story ; but, dear me ! you say, why couldn't Colum- 
bus have lived happily, after he had gone through so much, 
and done so much, and discovered America, and given us 
who came after him so splendid a land to live in ? 

Now, just here comes the real point of the story. Wise 
men tell us that millions upon millions of busy little insects 
die to make the beautiful coral islands of the Southern seas. 
Millions and millions of men and women have lived and 
labored, died and been forgotten by the world they helped to 
make the bright, and beautiful, and prosperous place to live 
in that it is to-day. 



174 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 



Columbus was one of these millions ; but he was a leader 
among them and has not been forgotten. As the world has 
got farther away from the time in which he lived, the man 
Columbus, who did so much and yet died almost unnoticed, 
has grown more and more famous ; his name is immortal, and 

to-day he is the hero Columbus ^ — 
one of the world's greatest men. 

We, in America, are fond of 
celebrating anniversaries. I sup- 
pose the years that you boys and 
girls have thus far 



lived have been the 
most remarkable 
in the history of 
the world for cele- 




( The gatnvay to the 
Bridge of Pines on 
which Col II fn bus runs 
turned back to dis- 
cover America.) 




brating anniver- 



( The bridge a/ Coicord tuhere luas fired the shot 
that made America free.) 

TWO HISTORIC BRIDGES. 



saries. For nearly 
twenty years the 
United States has 
been keeping its 
birthday. The celebration commenced even before you were 
born, with the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of 
Lexington (in 1875). It has not ended yet; for we are still 
celebrating the greatest of all our birthdays — the discovery 
of the continent that made it possible for us to be here at all. 
Now this has not always been so with us. I suppose 
that in 1592 and in 1692 no notice whatever was taken of 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT 



175 



the twelfth day of October, on which — one hundred and two 
hundred years before — Columbus had landed on that flat 
little " key " known as Watling's Island down among the 
West Indies, and had begun a new chapter in the world's 
wonderful story. In 1592, there was hardly anybody here to 
celebrate the anniversary — in fact, there was hardly anybody 
here at all, except a few Spanish settlers in the West Indies, 
in Mexico, and in Florida. In 
1692, there were a few scattered 
settlements of Frenchmen in 
Canada, of Englishmen in New 
England, Dutchmen in New 
York, Swedes in Delaware, and 
Englishmen in Maryland, Vir- 
ginia and the Carolinas. But 
none of these people loved the 
Spaniards. They hated them, 
indeed ; for there had been fierce 
fighting going on for nearly a 
hundred years between Spain 
and England, and you couldn't 
find an Englishman, a Dutch- 
man or a Swede who was willing to say a good word for 
Spain, or thank God for the man who sailed away in Spanish 
ships to discover America two hundred years before. 

In 1792, people did think a little more about this, and 
there were a few who did remember that, three hundred 




INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA. 

Where the Declaration of Independence was 
signed. ) 



176 HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 

years before, Columbus had found the great continent upon 
which, in that year 1792, a new republic, called the United 
States of America, had only just been started after a long 
and bloody war of rebellion and revolution. 

We do not find, however, that in that year of 1792 there 
were many, if any, public celebrations of the Discovery of 
America, in America itself. A certain American clergy- 
man, however, whose name was the Rev. Elhanan Win- 
chester, celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the 
Discovery of America by Columbus. And he celebrated it 
not in America, but in England, where he was then living. 
On the twelfth of October, 1792, Winchester delivered an 
address on " Columbus and his Discoveries," before a great 
assembly of interested listeners. In that address he said 
some very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things 
about the America that was to be : 

" I see the United States rise in all their ripened glory 
before me," he said. " I look through and beyond every 
yet peopled region of the New World, and behold period still 
brightening upon period. Where one contiguous depth of 
gloomy wilderness now shuts out even the beams of day, I 
see new States and empires, new seats of wisdom and knowl- 
edge, new religious domes spreading around. In places now 
untrod by any but savage beasts, or men as savage as they, 
I hear the voices of happy labor, and see beautiful cities ris- 
ing to view. I behold the whole continent highly cultivated 
and fertilized, full of cities, towns and villages, beautiful and 




2.0 






>3 



wvv^_ 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 



179 



lovely beyond expression. I hear the praises of my great 
Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers now unknown 
to song. Behold the delightful prospect ! See the silver 
and gold of America employed in the service of the Lord of 

the whole earth! See slavery, with 
all its train of attendant evils, forever 

abolished ! See 
communica- 




THE DISCOVERER OF OUR 
COUNTRY. 



THE FATHER OF OUR COUNI RY. 



THE SAVIOR OF OUR 
COUNTRY. 



tion opened through 

the whole continent, 

from North to South and from East to West, 

through a most fruitful country. Behold the 

glory of God extending, and the gospel spreading through 

the whole land ! " 

Of course, it was easy for a man to see and to hope and 
to say all this ; but it is a little curious, is it not, that he 
should have seen things just as they have turned out? 

In Mr. Winchester's day, the United States of America 
had not quite four millions of inhabitants. In his day 



i8o HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 

Virginia was the largest State — in the matter of population 
— Pennsylvania was the second and New York the third. 
Philadelphia was the greatest city, then followed New York, 
Boston, Baltimore and Charleston. Chicago was not even 
thought of. 

To-day, four hundred years after Columbus first saw 




THE HARROR OF NKW YORK CITY AND THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. 



American shores, one hundred and sixteen years after the 
United States were started in life by the Declaration of 
American Independence, these same struggling States of 
one hundred years ago are joined together to make the 
greatest and most prosperous nation in the world. With 
a population of more than sixty-two millions of people ; with 
the thirteen original States grown into forty-four, with the 
population of its three largest cities — New York; Philadel- 
phia and Chicago — more than equal to the population of 
the whole country one hundred years ago ; with schools and 



HOW THE STORY TWRJVS OUT. i8i 

colleges and happy homes brightening the whole broad land 
that now stretches from ocean to ocean, the United States 
leads all other countries in the vast continent Columbus dis- 
covered. Still westward, as Columbus led, the nation ad- 
vances ; and, in a great city that Columbus could never have 
imagined, and that the prophet of one hundred years ago 
scarcely dreamed of, the mighty Republic invites all the rest 
of the world to join with it in celebrating the four hundredth 
anniversary of the Discovery of America by Columbus the 
Admiral. And to do this celebrating fittingly and grandly, 
it has built up the splendid White City by the great Fresh 
Water Sea. 

Columbus was a dreamer; he saw such wonderful visions 
of what was to be, that people, as we know, tapped their 
foreheads and called him the " the crazy Genoese." But not 
even the wildest fancies nor the most wonderful dreams of 
Columbus came any where near to what he would really see, 
if to-day he could but visit the Exposition at .Chicago, in the 
great White City by the lake — a "show city" specially built 
for the World's Fair of 1893, given in his honor and as a 
monument to his memory. 

Why, he would say, the Cathay that I spent my life try- 
ing to find was but a hovel alongside of this ! What would 
he see ? A city stretching out a mile and a half in length, and 
more than half a mile in breadth ; a space covering over five 
hundred acres of ground, and containing seventeen magnifi- 
cent buildings, into any one of which could be put all the 



l82 



HOW THE STORY TUJ^NS OUT. 



palaces of all the kings and queens of Europe known to 
Columbus's day. And in these buildings he would see, 
gathered together, all the marvelous things, all the useful 
things, all the beautiful things, and all the delightful things 
that the world can make to-day, arranged and displayed for 
all the world to see. He would stand amazed in that wonder- 
ful city of glass and iron, that surpassingly beautiful city, all 




LOOKING DOWN THE LAGOON ON THE WORLD'S FAIR GROUNDS. 

of purest white, that has been built some eight miles from 
the center of big and busy Chicago, and that looks out upon 
the blue waters of mighty Lake Michigan. It is a city that I 
hope all the boys and girls of America — especially all who 
read this story of the man in whose honor it is built, may 
visit. And as they see all its wonderful sights, study all its 
marvelous exhibits, and enjoy all its beautiful belongings, they 




THE OLD AND THE NEW. 

(/« northern waters to-day the past and the presejit often meet, as the Indians paddling their canoes 
gaze in wonder upon the monster steamship.) 



JfOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 



'85 



will be ready to say how proud, and glad, and happy they are 
to think that they are American girls and boys, living in this 
wonderful nineteenth century that has been more crowded 
with marvels, and mysteries, and triumphs than any fairy tale 
one could imagine, or any one of the Arabian Nights ever 
contained. 

And then just stop and think what a parrot did. That is 
one of the most singular things in all this wonder story you 
are reading. Do you not remember how, when Columbus 
was slowly feeling his way westward, Captain Alonso Pin- 
zon saw some parrots flying southward, and believing from 
this that the land they sought was off in that direction, he 
induced Columbus to change his course from :j 
the west to the south ? If Columbus had not 
changed his course and fol- .- . . 

lowed the parrots, the Santa 
Maria, with the Pinta and 
the Nina, would have sailed 
on until they had entered 
the harbor of Savannah or 
Charleston, or perhaps the 
broad waters of Chesapeake 



.-■vi \ 



V 



■-r- 



A'fMJi^illiiisJilyfiil 



^ RAILWAY STAIION IN PHILADELPHIA 



Bay. Then the United States of to-day would have been 
discovered and settled by Spaniards, and the whole history 
of the land would have been quite different from what it has 
been. Spanish blood has peopled, but not uplifted, the coun- 
tries of South America and the Spanish Main. English 



i86 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT. 




A BUSINESS STREET IN CHICAGO 



blood, which, following after — because Columbus had first 
shown the way — peopled, saved and upbuilt the whole 

magnificent northern land 
that Spain missed and lost. 
They have found in it more 
gold than ever Columbus 
dreamed of in his never- 
found Cathay ; they have 
filled it with a nobler, braver, 
mightier, and more numer- 
ous people than ever Colum- 
bus imagined the whole 
mysterious land of the Indies contained; they have made it 
the home of freedom, of peace, of education, of intelligence 
and of progress, and have protected and bettered it until the 
whole world respects it for • , 4 

its strength, honors it for 
its patriotism, admires it 
for its energy, and marvels 
at it for its prosperity. 

And this is what a fly- 
ing parrot did : It turned the 
tide of lawless adventure, of 
gold-hunting, of slave-driv- 
ing, and of selfish strife for 
gain to the south ; it left the north yet unvisited until it 
was ready for the strong, and sturdy, and determined men 



x% 




THE DOME OF THE CAPITOL. 

( The shrine of American sovereignty^ 



HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT, 187 

and women who, hunting for liberty, came across the seas 
and founded the colonies that became in time the free and 
independent republic of the United States of America. 

And thus has the story of Columbus really turned out. 
Happier than any fairy tale, more marvelous than any 
wonder book, the story of the United States of America is 
one that begins, "Once upon a time," and has come to the 
point where it depends upon the boys and girls who read it, 
to say whether or not they shall " live happily ever after." 

The four hundred years of the New World's life closes its 
chapter of happiness in the electric lights and brilliant sun- 
shine of the marvelous White City by Lake Michigan. It 
is a continued story of daring, devotion and progress, that 
the boys and girls of America should never tire of reading. 
And this story was made possible and turned out so well, 
because of the briefer, but no less interesting story of the 
daring, the devotion and the faith of the determined Genoese 
sailor of four hundred years ago, whom men knew as Don 
Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of the Ocean Seas. 




/-/- 



LBJa'QG 



Ql 



